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PREFACE 

In teaching American history, whether in the secondary school or 
in the college, there are many problems in connection with the division 
of the subject, method of treatment, and emphasis. It has been my 
aim, in this short history, to add my contribution toward the solution 
of some of these problems from the practical standpoint of one who 
has had many years of experience both as teacher and as examiner, 
acquainted in the first capacity with the difhculty of presenting the 
subject, and in the second, with the unsatisfactory results often 
obtained. 

Some of the subjects of special emphasis in the present volume are, 
in the period of exploration and discovery, the development of geo- 
graphical knowledge; and in the colonial period the dependence of 
events in the colonies upon contemporary English history, and the 
close connection between the West Indies and the mainland as parts 
of the same colonial empire. Less space than usual has been given 
to military history, the attempt being to present the broad outlines 
of campaigns, the general plans with their successes and failures, 
rather than descriptions of battles in detail; while the social and in- 
dustrial development of the country, economic progress, sources and 
effects of immigration, conditions on the ever-receding frontier, and 
changes in governmental forms', both hatix)rial and local, have received 
special attention. The' ped,(;;e' movement and £oreign relations, par- 
ticularly the Pan-American movement, have been stressed. Recent 
history, which is often slighted for the period since 1865, occupies 
more than one-fourth of the book, a large share being devoted to the 
period since 1900. In fact, one of the objects of the book, constantly 
kept in mind, has been to introduce the student to present-day condi- 
tions and problems. 

I desire to recognize my debt of gratitude to my colleagues, Pro- 
fessors Hill and Shattuck for various illustrations, and Professor 
Bracq, for permission to use his original Hondius-Mercator map; 
to Archibald Freeman of PhilHps Academy, Andover, Massachusetts, 
who has lately read the entire manuscript in its completed form and 
offered much valuable criticism; and to my wife, whose criticism 
and aid at every stage of the work has been a constant source of 

inspiration and profit. 

EMERSON DAVID FITE 



CONTENTS 



PART I 
THE NEW WORLD 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Discovery and Exploration i 

II. The Native Americans and Their Country . , 22 

PART II 
THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

III. Spanish and Portuguese America 29 

IV. English America under Queen Elizabeth and the Early Stuart 

Kings, 1558-1642 ^t, 

V. Dutch, Swedish, Danish, and Russian America 61 

VI. English America. Influence of the Uprising of the English 

Puritans, 1642-1660 67 

VII. English America under the Later Stuart Kings, 1660-1688 . 69 
VIII. English America. Influence of the English Revolution of 

1688 79 

IX. French America 83 

X. British and French America 88 

PART III 

THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

XI. British America in 1763 98 

XII. The Rise of Political Discontent 117 

XIII. The War of Independence 143 

PART IV 
ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

1781-1801 

XIV. The Failure of the Articles of Confederation, i 781-1789 . 166 
XV. The Success of the New Constitution, i 789-1 801 179 

PART V 

NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1801-1841 

XVI. Jeffersonian Democracy 207 

XVII. The War of 1812 220 

XVIII. Reaction against Nationalism 246 

XIX. Jacksonian Democracy 268 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

PART VI 

AN ERA OF TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND CONTINUED 
SECTIONAL STRIFE, 1841-1865 

XX. The Mexican Annexations and Other Phases of Expansion . 297 

XXI. The Quarrel over Slavery in the Territories 317 

XXII. Secession 341 

XXIII. The Civil War 350 

PART VII 
AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

XXIV. Economic Reconstruction 393 

XXV. Political Reconstruction 411 

XXVI. Agrarian and Industrial Unrest 426 

XXVII. Prosperity, Panic, and Slow Recovery 445 



PART VIII 

A WORLD POWER 

XXVIII. The United States in World Politics 476 

XXIX. Progressive Democracy 504 

APPENDIX 

I. Declaration of Independence 533 

II. Articles of Confederation 536 

III. Constitution of the United States 543 

IV. War Message of President Wilson 557 

V. Book Lists 564 

Index 5^7 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

Christopher Columbus 2 

The Ships of Columbus 7 

Balboa Taking Possession of the 

Pacific Ocean 12 

The Half Moon 17 

An Indian Village 23 

Sir Francis Drake 34 

Drake's "Pelican" or "Golden 

Hind" 35 

Sir Walter Raleigh 36 

John Smith 39 

Jamestown, Va., in 1622 41 

The Brewster House, Scrooby, 

England 44 

The First Thanksgiving Dinner . . 47 
The Barker House at Pembroke, 

Massachusetts 48 

John Winthrop 49 

Statue of Roger Williams 51 

The Stadt Huys, First City Hall in 

New York 62 

New Amsterdam, about 1630 ... 63 

Peter Stuyvesant 64 

William Penn 76 

Samuel de Champlain 84 

The First Building in Quebec, 1608 85 
Franklin's Device to Encourage 
Union, first used in the Pennsyl- 
vania Gazette 91 

Benjamin Frankhn 92 

Quebec 94 

Colonial Stage 99 

Growth of a Pioneer Home . . . 105 

New York Harbor no 

Harvard College, 1788 112 

British Stamp iig 

George III 122 

The Boston Massacre 124 

The Minute Man 128 

Daniel Boone 134 

Independence Hall, Philadelphia . 139 

Franklin at the Court of France . . 149 

Continental Money 151 



Ohio Flatboat with Superstructure 

of Rough Lumber 153 

John Paul Jones 154 

John Andre 156 

The Surrender of Yorktown . . . 160 

Fraunces' Tavern, New York . . 163 

John Adams 169 

The Start of the Ohio Company 
from Ipswich, Massachusetts, for 

Marietta, Ohio 172 

Mount Vernon i8o 

Washington i8i 

New York's Second City Hall, Fed- 
eral Hall 182 

Thomas Jefferson 183 

Alexander Hamilton 184 

Mrs. Washington's First Reception 190 

An Early Frontier Fort in Ohio . . 193 
Medal Struck for the Voyage of the 

"Columbia" 200 

John Marshall 209 

James Madison 220 

Henry Clay 221 

U. S. Frigate Constitution — "Old 

Ironsides" 225 

Whitney's Cotton Gin 233 

The "Clermont" 236 

First Steamboat from Pittsburgh to 

New Orleans 237 

Picking Cotton, near Atlanta, Ga. 238 

Cincinnati in 1810 239 

Overland Travel 241 

Typical Log Cabin 242 

Mail Carrier about 1800 243 

John Quincy Adams 251 

John C. Calhoun 260 

Canal Boat in 1825 263 

"De Witt Clinton" and Train. . . 265 

Andrew Jackson 268 

Daniel Webster 270 

Chicago in 1832 280 

A Factory Town in 1838 (Lowell, 

Mass.) 283 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



PAGE 

The Original McCormick Reaper . 284 

William Lloyd Garrison 2S8 

Martin Van Buren 292 

Astoria in 1813 3°° 

Mission San Francisco de la 

Espada, San Antonio, Texas . . 305 

Sutter's Mill 31° 

Old Prairie Schooner and Stage 

Coach of First Days in West . . 311 

William H. Seward 322 

Stephen A. Douglas 327 

Sources of English Cotton Imports 

in i860 345 

Abraham Lincoln 35° 

Fort Sumter 352 

Ericsson's Monitor. Side Eleva- 
tion 360 

The Monitor and the Merrimac . 360 

Wendell Phillips 364 

Horace Greeley 3^5 

President Lincoln and his Cabinet 
discussing the Emancipation Proc- 
lamation 366 

Not According to the Constitution. 370 
An Argument for the Use of Negro 

Soldiers 37i 

William T. Sherman 378 



PAGE 

Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln . . 382 

Ulysses S. Grant 383 

Jefferson Davis 384 

Robert E. Lee 385 

Vassar College in 1865 390 

The Completion of the Union 
Pacific and Central Pacific Rail- 
road 397 

Thomas A. Edison 402 

Wagon Train across the Plains . . 403 

A Trial by the Ku Klux Klan . . . 417 

Grover Cleveland 436 

Pan-American Building, Washing- 
ton, D.C 456 

William McKinley 467 

The Battleship "Maine" Entering 

Havana Harbor 472 

Theodore Roosevelt 479 

Woodrow Wilson 480 

Per Cent Distribution of Foreign- 
Born Population, 1910 .... 506 
Increase of Population in the United 
States and the Principal Coun- 
tries of Europe: 1800-1910. . . 510 
A Modern Meat-Packing Plant . . 515 
John Mitchell 518 



LIST OF MAPS 
IN COLOR 

Joliet's Map of New France Facing page xii 

European Provinces, 1655 68 

The Thirteen American Colonies in 1775 126 

The West Indies 132 

The United States at the Peace of 1783 162 

Territorial Growth of the United States 308 

The United States in i860 348 

Territorial Acquisitions of the United States 482 

The United States, exclusive of Insular Possessions 526 

IN BLACK 

The World According to Toscanelli 3 

Columbus's First Voyage 8 

Routes of Discoveries 10 

Atlantic Discoveries 15 

The Western Hemisphere, by Henry Hondius, 1630 19 

Early Virginia and Maryland 57 

North America in 1713 89 

North America in 1763 95 

Boston and Vicinity 130 

Seat of War in the West, 1 775-1 783 134 

Campaign in Middle States 144 

Capture and Evacuation of Philadelphia 146 

Burgoyne's Campaign 147 

Revolution in the Southern States 157 

Washington's Movement to York town 159 

Operations along the Canadian Border 224 

Operations around Washington 227 

Expedition against New Orleans 228 

The Cumberland Road 235 

The Oregon Country 301 

The Trails to Oregon and California 302 

The Mexican War 306 

The Missions and Chapels of California 307 

Fort Sumter and Charleston Harbor 353 

Battle of Bull Run 354 

Operations in the West 358 

Capture of New Orleans 359 

McClellan's Peninsular Campaign 361 

First Invasion of the North 362 

Second Invasion of the North 367 

The Vicksburg Campaign 368 

Murfreesboro to Atlanta 369 

Operations in the East 376 

Sherman's March 379 

Map of the Philippine Islands 473 

xi 



To Monseigneur, Count Frontenac, Councillor of the King, Governor and Lieuten- 
ant-General for his Majesty in Canada, Acadia, Newfoundland and in the country 
of New France. 

Monseigneur 

I take pleasure in presenting to you this map which will enable you to understand 
the location of the rivers and lakes on which one travels through Canada or North 
America, which is more than 1,200 leagues from East to West. 

That great river (the Mississippi) beyond Lake Huron and Lake Illinois (or 
Michigan), which bears your name, the River Buade, since it was discovered in these 
last two years, 1673 and 1674, as a result of the first orders you gave me as you entered 
on the government of New France, flows between Florida and INIexico, and on 
its way to the sea runs through the most beautiful country imaginable. I have 
seen nothing in France so beautiful as the abundance of fine prairies and nothing so 
pleasant as the varieties of groves and forests where one can pick plums, pomegran- 
ates, lemons and several small fruits which are not found in Europe. In the fields, 
quail rise; in the woods, parrots are seen; and in the rivers one catches fish which 
cannot be identified by taste, shape or size. 

Iron mines and reddish rocks, never found except with copper, are not rare, like- 
wise slate, saltpetre, coal, marble, and alloys of copper. The largest pieces of copper 
that I saw were as large as a fist and free from impurities. It was discovered near 
the reddish rocks which are much like those of France and numerous. 

All the savages have wooden canoes, fifty feet and more in length; they do not 
care for deer as food, but they kill buffalo, which roam in herds of thirty or fifty. 
I have myself counted 400 on the banks of the river, and turkeys are extremely common. 

They harvest Indian corn generally three times a year, and they have watermelons 
for refreshment in the heat, since there is no ice and very little snow. 

One of the great rivers running into the Mississippi from the West gives a passage 
into the Gulf of California (Mer Vermeille). I saw a village which is only five days' 
journey from a tribe which trades with the natives of California. If I had arrived 
two days earlier I could have talked to those who had come and had brought four 
hatchets as a present. 

The description of everything could have been seen in my diary, if the good fortune 
which attended me all through the Journey had not failed me a quarter of an hour 
before arriving at the place from which I had departed. I had escaped the dangers 
from the savages, I had passed forty rapids and was about to land with all possible 
joy over the success of such a long and difficult undertaking when my canoe was 
overturned and I lost two men and my chest, in sight of and at the doors of the first 
French houses that I had left nearly two years before. Nothing is left to me but my 
life and the desire to use it for whatever will please you. 

Monseigneur, your very humble and obedient servant and subject, 

xii JOLIET 



HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES 



PART I 
THE NEW WORLD 

CHAPTER I 
DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION 

IDEAS AND EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA 

P'oR centuries before Columbus the seas which stretched away from 

the coasts of Europe had remained an expanse of mystery and wonder. 

Ships had crept cautiously out upon their waters and back , ^ j • 

•1 11 1 -1 r Introduction, 

agam, but no one had ventured to sail away from land 

for days and days, with no signs of hope from the apparently limitless 
waste, sustained only by faith in his own enterprise, until Columbus 
dared, and solved the mystery. In view of the results that have 
come from his ventures, his may be accounted the greatest dis- 
covery in the history of the world. Certainly his bold incursions 
into the mystery of the western horizon mark the beginning of 
American history. 

Rejecting the common belief that the world was flat, Christopher 
Columbus maintained that it was round and that by sailing westward 
he could come to China and Japan in the East. Where Columbus's 
did he get this idea? It was not new, for the Greeks had F^at idea and 
held it two thousand years before him. At the very among the 
dawn of Greek civilization Homer had asserted that the ^^^^^ Greeks, 
earth was wheel-shaped and flat, surrounded on all sides by the ocean, 
beyond which was mythland; but Aristotle, in the fourth century 
before Christ, noting the circular shadow of the earth on the moon 
during an eclipse, and the different altitudes of the North Star at 
different places, reached the conclusion that the earth was spherical, 
and wrote that those who said that the sea was one from Gibraltar to 
India "do not assert things very improbable." After the decline of 
Greek civilization, the idea did not completely die out, but was handed 
down to modern times through the Mohammedans, from whom Colum- 
bus himself may have derived it in southern Spain, where Mohammedan 



THE NEW WORLD 



Scientific 
data in Co- 
lumbus's day 
concerning 
the shape of 
the earth. 



civilization, though on the decHne, was still prevalent in his day. In 
the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon in England gave Aristotle's 
theory a place in Christian literature in his "Opus Majus," and his 
words were later repeated in a Latin book called "Imago Mundi," 
which we know influenced Columbus. 

From 1472 to 1492 Europe saw several new editions of Ptolemy's 
old Greek geography, dating from the second century after Christ 
and based upon the 
theory that the world 
was round. In Co- 
lumbus's time, too, 
the modern globe was 
slowly coming into use to repre- 
sent the Greek conception of the 
earth's rotundity, and Columbus 
may have had opportunity to 
study one of these, or possibly he 
may have owned one himself. 
The Behaim globe of his day is 
still in existence. Finally, the 
Florentine astronomer, Toscanelli, 
to whom Columbus wrote for ad- 
vice, furnished him with geograph- 
ical data based on the Greek 
conception, though both Behaim 
and Toscanelli underestimated the 
size of the earth and extended the continent of Asia so as to locate 
Cipango (Japan) about as far from Europe as is in actuality the Gulf 
of Mexico. 

It is possible that Columbus made a visit to Iceland before 1492, 
or that he talked with sailors and others who knew the Icelandic sea 
Possible sug- tales. These tales, called sagas, first reduced to writing 
in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, contained an 
account of certain old Icelandic or Norse sea rovers, who 
in the year 1000 or thereabouts, under the leadership of 
Leif Ericson, made a long ocean journey to a new land 
west and south of Greenland, where they found fields of "self-sown" 
grain and grapevines growing wild. This land they named Vinland. 
Since there is but one land west and south of Greenland, scholars 
generally believe that the Northmen reached the mainland of North 
America. Here to-day on the Atlantic coast is to be found a wild 
rice, which may be identified with the grain mentioned in the sagas, 




Christopher Columbus 



gestions by 

the Northmen 

concerning 

unknown 

western 

lands. 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION 




k 



4 THE NEW WORLD 

and here to-day wild grapes still grow. The present northern limit 
of both the rice and the grapes is near Nova Scotia; and so, some- 
where on the long Atlantic coast south of Nova Scotia, we conclude! 
that the Northmen made their landings, though at what spot we cannot 
tell. Every vestige of their presence on these shores has long since 
disappeared. So much for the Northmen, who have left no mark on 
American history. If Columbus heard their story, he found in it 
but one point of interest, — that there was a land beyond the ocean 
to be reached by a voyage to the west. As for cold and barren Vinland, , 
he would have nothing of it. He was eager to reach another and 
fairer land, described by a great traveler whose story was clearly 
authentic. 

This traveler was Marco Polo, a Venetian, who reached Cathay, 

or China, by a long overland journey from Europe in the latter 

_ . , part of the thirteenth century, obtained a place in the 

Xriflrco Polo S -^ ' 1 

account of a native annals of China — which serves to verify his tale — ■ 
sea east of ^^^ returned to Europe to write of his experiences. In 
the Columbian library at Seville, Spain, there is a book 
entitled "The Book of Ser Marco Polo," on the margin of which are 
notes in the handwriting of Columbus. Two things in the story partic- 
ularly interested him. First, Polo described the distant coasts which he 
visited as washed on the east by a great sea; so, reasoned Columbus, 
if there was an ocean east of this land and if the earth was round, this 
ocean might be the same as that which washed the shores of western 
Europe. Second, Polo pictured the Asiatic lands and the near-by 
island of Cipango (Japan) as abounding in palaces with roofs and 
pavements of gold. Columbus's ambition was fired to sail to these 
eastern countries and find their treasures. His first questions to 
the natives wherever he went on his coming voyages were always 
of gold. 

In these early days, when people knew little of the art of modern 
cooking and still less of modern methods of preserving food from 
The need of decay, Europeans were wont to cover up rancid tastes 
a new route and odors in their food by the use of spices, which were 
imported from India and the adjacent islands. Silks, 
gems, precious stones, and drugs reached Europe from the same 
source. One of the routes of this trade ran by way of the Black and 
Caspian Seas and one through Persia and the Persian Gulf, but 
both of these routes were closed by the Turkish conquests in western 
Asia and eastern Europe, which culminated in the capture of Con- 
stantinople in 1453. A new route to the East became a commercial 
necessity. 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION 5 

As this need became apparent, Portuguese mariners, under the 
patronage of Prince Henry the Navigator, of Portugal, began to 
explore the western coast of Africa in the hope that j^^^^ voyages 
somewhere in its extent they might find a passage through in his own 
to the East. They reached the equator in 147 1, and gave^practical 
fifteen years later the very southernmost tip of land and hints to Co- 
the coast beyond. This remarkable voyage was accom- 
plished by Bartholomew Diaz, whose King, in speaking of the results 
of the voyage, exultingly declared that Diaz had rounded the "Cape 
of Good Hope." Continuing in the same way, Vasco da Gama actually 
reached India and the near-by islands in 1498, and the prize was won. 
Columbus's brother was with Diaz in i486, and Columbus himself 
may have been on one such voyage. These long voyages were a school 
of practical navigation, in which mariners first learned to compile 
nautical tables and to compute latitude in unknown seas by the 
newly discovered astrolabe. The only compass in use was a mag- 
netized needle set on a straw in a basin of water, and this was not 
very sensitive. 

It was a stirring age in which Columbus lived. Western Europe 
was the scene of a renaissance or re-birth of interest in art, sculpture, 
and architecture, in literature and science, and in com- 
merce and geographical knowledge. Men were slowly a representa- 
casting off the intellectual torpor of the Middle or Dark ^^ °.^ *h® 
Ages and awakening to new ideas and to new confidence 
in their own powers. With his interest in the Greek ideas, which were 
a characteristic of the period, with his mental alertness, his enterprise, 
and his zest for investigation, Columbus was a striking representative 
of the spirit of the times. 

COLUMBUS, CABRAL, AND CABOT 

By 1475, when he was about thirty years old, Columbus, who was 
a native of Genoa, Italy, came to Lisbon, Portugal, determined to 
devote his life to a career of maritime discovery. He Columbus's 
was an ardent student of the problems of the seas, and preparation, 
toiled year after year, studying maps, sailors' charts and stories, 
accounts of travels, and indeed everything connected with the seas 
and ships. While the Portuguese were turning their prows down 
the coasts of Africa in search of the Spice Islan'ds of the East, 
to Columbus the East lay in the West and westward he proposed 
to go. 

Several of the leading sovereigns of Europe, including Henry VII of 
England and Charles VIII of France, to whom he applied for financial 



6 THE NEW WORLD 

assistance, turned him aside as an impractical dreamer, but finally 
Queen Isabella of Spain came to his assistance. With her money, 
Columbus's ^^^ w^^^ contributions from Columbus himself and from 
first voyage to the seaport town of Palos, Spain, three small ships, the 
menca. Santa Maria, the Nina, and the Pinta, were fitted out; 

and in these, on Friday, August 3, 1492, in defiance of superstition, the 
little expedition of ninety men set sail from Palos. The flagship, the 
Santa Maria, was probably only sixty-three feet in length and twenty 
in width, while her companion ships were still smaller. Even with 
the present knowledge of the seas, few would dare to attempt to cross 
the Atlantic in ships so small. The Canary Islands were reached and 
left behind in the first month. In the unknown seas beyond, the 
weather proved fair and the voyage easy; but the comforting land, the 
sight of which had been a constant solace to the Portuguese in their 
long southern voyages, receded farther and farther, perhaps thousands 
of miles, and in terror the sailors threw Columbus's theories to the 
winds, mutinied, and demanded to go back. Columbus alone kept 
faith in the quest, and he kept it bravely. Reward came one moon- 
light night in October, ten weeks after the expedition had set out. 
For several hours flocks of birds and floating objects in the sea had 
been noted, which seemed to indicate the near approach to land; and 
at two o'clock in the morning of Friday, October 12, a sandy beach 
hove in sight, which in devout gratitude Columbus named San Salva- 
dor, or Holy Savior. On account of the inaccurate nautical instru- 
ments in use and consequent mistakes in reckoning, the exact location 
of Columbus's San Salvador cannot now be determined. It was 
doubtless one of the Bahamas, but of these there are three thousand. 
Columbus believed that he was approaching India, and gave the name 
Indians to the strange peoples whom he found. From San Salvador 
he proceeded to Cuba, and there, thinking that he had reached Cipango, 
and that Cathay was near, he sent off an interpreter to find the Great 
Khan, the ruler of Cathay, and to deliver to him a letter from the 
Spanish sovereigns, Ferdinand and Isabella. 

After further explorations, in which Hispaniola (Haiti) and other 
West Indian islands were discovered, Columbus sailed back to Spain, 
His welcome where he received an enthusiastic welcome. As proof 
home and of his story, he exhibited to the astonished people of 

other voyages, gp^jj^ gj^ natives from the new lands and many curi- 
ous stuffed birds and mammals. On a second voyage in 1494 
he founded a colony in Hispaniola; on a third in 1498 he explored 
a part of the coast of South America and the mouth of the 
Orinoco River, thus laying the foundation of Spain's claim to that 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION 




8 



THE NEW WORLD 



continent; and on his fourth and last voyage in 1502 he passed 
along the coast of Central America. 

On his second and third voyages hundreds of Spaniards flocked 
to his standard and freely invested their fortunes in what they be- 
. lieved would be a paying enterprise, for to them their 
of Columbus rivals, the Portuguese, seemed outdistanced in the race 
in his last ^q ^]^q East, and rich returns seemed sure. In point of 
fact, we know that the race after all went to the Portu- 
guese, who brought back their spice-laden ships to Europe in 1499, 
while the Spanish hopes of gain were not so speedily realized. In 




500 1000 2000 3000 

CoLtTMBUs's First Voyage 

their chagrin the Spaniards laid the blame for their losses on Colum- 
bus, whom they denounced as a cheat, and the last days of the great 
discoverer, until his death in 1506, were spent in poverty and disgrace. 

Had not Columbus reached the new lands when he did, the western 
continent would probably have been discovered eight years later by 
Chance dis- mere chance, for in 1500 a Portuguese expedition of 
covery of thirteen ships, under the command of Pedro Alvarez de 

America by Cabral, bound down the west coast of Africa for the Spice 
Cabral. Islands of the East, was driven from its course across the 

Atlantic to the eastern shores of Brazil. Cabral named the country 
which he touched Vera Cruz or Santa Cruz, and by his voyage gave to 
the Portuguese a claim to a portion of the mainland of South America. 

Between Columbus's first and second voyages, some, in doubt as to 
The Pooe's where he had really been, feared that possibly his dis- 
demarcation covery lay in the regions off the west coast of Africa, which 
^^^' had already by papal grant been recognized as belonging 

to Portugal. In order to prevent dispute, appeal was made to the Pope 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION . 9 

for a decision marking off the respective possessions of the two powers, 
Spain and Portugal. By a bull, or proclamation, the Pope decreed 
that an imaginary demarcation line should be drawn, running north 
and south in the Atlantic one hundred leagues west of the Cape Verd 
Islands, and that all the newly discovered lands east of this line should 
fall to Portugal and all west of it to Spain. By a treaty in 1494 the 
line was placed at three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Cape 
Verd Islands, but even then the eastern part of Brazil was the only 
portion of the new continent that fell on Portugal's side of the line. 

The honor of discovering the mainland of North America is usually 
ascribed to the Enghsh, as the result of the voyage of an English ship 
under an Italian captain, John Cabot, which arrived in 
the vicinity of the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1497. Unlike ery of North 
Cabral in 1500, Cabot was consciously following in the r^^^^r^u\ 
paths of Columbus, but whereas Columbus sailed with 
three ships and ninety men, Cabot mustered only one ship and 
eighteen men. The one enjoyed calm sailing; the other was called 
upon to brave the storms of the north Atlantic. "Our Venetian, who 
went with a small ship from Bristol," wrote an Italian in London to 
his brothers in Italy, "has come back, and says that he has dis- 
covered, seven hundred leagues off, the mainland of the country of 
the Grau Cam (that is, China) and that he coasted along it for three 
hundred leagues and landed, but did not see any persons. But he has 
brought here to the King certain snares spread to take game, and a 
needle for making nets, and he found some notched trees, from which 
he judged that there were inhabitants. . . . His name is Zuam 
Talbot, and he is called the Great Admiral, great honor being paid to 
him, and he goes dressed in silk." Possibly Sebastian Cabot accom- 
panied his father in 1497, and it is supposed by some that both father 
and son engaged in a second voyage to America in 1498, of which, 
however, nothing is definitely known. Although the single voyage of 
Cabot in 1497 laid the foundation for the claims of England to the 
mainland of North America, the English made no effort to follow up 
the discovery for more than seventy-five years. Internal and foreign 
politics were absorbing their energies. 

The discovery of America was now only begun. Columbus had 
disclosed the West Indian Islands and a small part of the neighboring 
coast, Cabot a vague part of the coast farther north. 
Almost the whole continental coast line of North America cosa map of 
and South America remained to be traced, the interior fi^"^**° 
mountains, plains, and rivers had still to be visited, and 
the long way searched out to the Pacific. The earliest map of 



lO 



THE NEW WORLD 



America now in existence was drawn on a large parchment in 1500 by- 
Juan de la Cosa. On it are located the northern shores of South 
America, but with no suggestion of the great extent of the conti- 
nental mass farther south; the Gulf of Mexico and the islands 
which shut it off from the Atlantic are in place, but Florida and the 




Routes of Discoveries 



whole of the Atlantic coast north of it as far as Nova Scotia or 
possibly Newfoundland are not outlined. Two English flags, marking 
the "sea discovered by Englishmen," roughly locate Cabot's discovery. 
The Cantino map of the year 1502, while confirming that of La Cosa 
concerning the work of Columbus, is silent on the voyages of Cabot 
The Cantino and awards Newfoundland to the Portuguese, who 
map of 1502. reached the shores of this island in 1 500-1 502 under the 
leadership of the Corte-Real brothers. The twenty-two local names of 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION ii 

bays and headlands in Florida placed upon this map show that this 
portion of the country had been visited and traced before 1502, 
though when and by whom cannot now be determined. It is pos- 
sible that some unknown voyager set foot on the mainland of North 
America before John Cabot. 

TRACING THE COAST LINE OF SOUTH AMERICA, 1500-1533 

In a series of voyages, Americus Vespucius, an Italian in the service 

of Spain, sailed along the east coast of South America and possibly 

reached that part of North America which is now the ^^u 

. . . . The voyages 

United States. He described his explorations in certain of Americus 
letters, and in one of these, describing his voyage of 1501 V®sP"""s- 
and published in Latin under the title "Mundus Novus," he boldly 
claimed that he had found a new world. "We found what may be 
called a new world," he wrote, speaking of what must have been the 
lands of South America. In another account Vespucius also claimed 
to have reached the mainland of America in 1497. In his letter de- 
scribing his voyage of 1492 Columbus had indicated his belief that 
he had found Cathay and Cipango, but in writing of his voyage of 
1498, on which he had touched the mainland of South America, he 
used language very much like that of Vespucius. He spoke of "a 
boundless land to the south of which hitherto there has been no knowl- 
edge," and he called it "another world." Columbus, therefore, as 
well as Vespucius, laid claim to the discovery of a new world; but 
while the claims of the great Genoese were not published in full till the 
nineteenth century and no reference to them was made by other 
writers till 1504, those of Vespucius were read extensively over all 
Europe in 1503. 

In 1507, in St. Die in France, a German professor, Martin Wald- 
seemiiller, published a new edition of Ptolemy's geography, in which 
he printed one of the letters of Vespucius as an appendix The naming 
and suggested that the new world discovered by Americus °^ America, 
be called America in his honor. Suiting his action to his words, 
Waldseemiiller made a map in which the name America, applied 
however only to South America, appeared for the first time. There 
is no evidence that Vespucius had any part in the suggestion of the 
name or even knew about it. Many scholars now believe that Ves- 
pucius did not coast along South America in 1497 before Columbus 
reached the mainland, though undoubtedly he made later voyages 
there. In six years more Waldseemiiller himself dropped the name 
America and called South America "Terra Incognita — discovered 



12 



THE NEW WORLD 




Balboa Taking Possession of the Pacific Ocean 



by Columbus." The euphony of the name America was in its favor, 
and it succeeded in maintaining itself. 

The discoverer of the vast ocean west of the slowly emerging con- 
tinent was Balboa. While searching for gold in the Isthmus of Panama, 

this Spanish 
The discov- , ^ 

ery of the explorer hrst 

P«c„^? 0"^° learned from 
by Balboa. 

the natives 
that he was traversing a 
narrow neck of land and 
that a great sea lay be- 
yond. The discovery 
which ensued was dra- 
matic in the extreme. 
Guided by Indians and 
followed by a band of 
picked men, the leader 
made his way through 
the almost impenetrable 

forest. When he believed that the moment of discovery was at 
hand, he ordered the expedition to stop while he went ahead to 
high ground that he might first behold the great view alone. As the 
isthmus runs east and west at this point, he appropriately called 
the waters, which he beheld to the south, the South Sea. Sev- 
eral days more of hard marching brought the party to the ocean 
side, where Balboa proudly advanced into the water and took posses- 
sion of the sea and all the lands upon its borders in the name of the 
King of Spain. Later he made the first suggestion of an Atlantic- 
Pacific canal, when he proposed to his sovereign that a canal be dug 
across the isthmus which he had discovered. Ten years earlier, when 
Columbus was on his fourth voyage, the natives had pointed out to him 
the nearness of the southern sea; but he turned back. 

In the same year, 1513, the Spaniard, Ponce de Leon, who had 
been governor of Porto Rico, sailed from Cuba and reached the near-by 

mainland, which, as shown by the early maps, had doubt- 
Leon's dis- less been visited before. In honor of the day of his landing 
coveryof }^g called the region "Terra de Pascua Florida" or the 

"Land of Easter," known since simply as Florida. This 
authentic voyage was the basis of Spain's claim to North America. 
Like many another explorer, de Leon sought gold, but he also sought 
a more elusive goal, the fountain of perpetual youth, which, he had 
heard, bubbled in the wonderful new country. He staked life and 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION 13 

fortune on the quest, but went back disappointed, having attained 
eternal fame but not the renewal of youth which he sought. 

Six years later, another Spaniard, Alvarez de Pineda, proved that 
Florida was not an island by saihng along the northern shores of the 
Gulf of Mexico as far west as Mexico. Turning back, he The voyage 
entered the Rio del Espiritu Santo, which was either the of Pineda. 
Mississippi River or Mobile Bay, probably the latter, where he 
remained for six weeks, trading with the Indians and observing their 
customs. 

In the year 15 19 Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese mariner in the 
service of Spain, with five ships and a crew of two hundred and eighty 
men, including Spaniards, Portuguese, Genoese, Sicilians, 
Dutch, French, Germans, Greeks, Malays, and Negroes, g^^^iTof^he 
started on a voyage which proved to be epoch-making. 11°^®,^^ 
Three years later, on the thirtieth anniversary of the day 
when Columbus set sail from the Canaries, eighteen of the motley crew 
returned to Spain on a single ship, the Victoria, having come back to 
their starting place by a continuous voyage to the west. The earth 
had been circumnavigated for the first time. Several years before, 
while on a journey to the Spice Islands over the route of the Portu- 
guese, Magellan had come to believe that these islands lay on the 
Spanish or western side of the papal line of demarcation and that 
he could reach them by sailing westward, if only he could get 
around America. How he arrived at the conclusion that he could 
sail around the new continent, no one knows. Possibly Vasco da 
Gama's success in finding a way around Africa inspired Magellan 
to search for a similar passage in the western world. He skirted 
the whole of the eastern coast of Waldseemiiller's America, that 
is. South America, examining the rivers in the hope of finding one 
that was salt and led on to Cipango and Cathay. So thorough 
was his search that he tarried three weeks at the La Plata River 
to make sure that this was not the desired passage. Treason and 
desertion in the ranks of the crew more than once threatened to destroy 
the enterprise. Five weeks were spent in passing through the winding 
passage since known as the Straits of Magellan. Emerging from this, 
the expedition came to the ocean which Balboa had already named 
the South Sea but which Magellan now called the Pacific, that is, the 
Peaceful. The ships pressed northward for some days, and then 
struck boldly to the west for almost four months out of all sight of land. 
Suffering from scurvy and from hunger was intense; at times the men 
were forced to eat leather, sometimes they were able to procure rats. 
At last the Philippine Islands were reached, where Magellan was 



14 THE NEW WORLD 

killed by the natives, but not before he realized the meaning of his 
voyage, for from his previous journeys to these parts with the Por- 
tuguese he knew that the Philippines adjoined Asia. He had proved, 
first, that the world was round; second, that there was an ocean 
between South America and Asia, by far the largest body of water 
on the globe; and third, that the globe was much larger than 
ToscaneUi, Behaim, and Columbus had believed. 

The remainder of the coast of South America was soon outlined. 
The geographical contributions of Columbus, Vespucius, Balboa, and 
Completion Magellan were supplemented by the explorations of the 
of the out- Pizarro brothers, who conquered Peru in 1533 and sailed 
Sout™^^ ° up and down the Pacific on the western shores of South 
America. America for hundreds of miles. Certainly by the date 

of their final successes in Peru, the whole of the South American coast 
was known in outhne to the Spaniards. 

PROGRESS OF GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE CONCERNING 
NORTH AAIERICA 

Meantime the work of tracing the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of 
North America was not neglected. While Magellan was making his 
voyage around the world, a Spanish expedition under Cortes, 1519- 
1521, conquered Mexico and reached the Pacific in that quarter. 
Florida, as we have seen, was found before Magellan had proved the 
The search continental dimensions of South America. After him, 
for the brave mariners, his imitators, set out to find a passage 

Passage to around America to Asia in the north. The leader in 
Asia. |-hig famous search for the Northwest Passage, which 

was not to be crowned with success till the middle of the nine- 
teenth century, was the Spaniard d'Ayllon, who examined the James 
River and Chesapeake Bay in 1524. In the same year, despite 
the monopoly claimed by the Spaniards on these shores by virtue 
of the Pope's fine of demarcation, the Italian Verrazano sailed along 
the same coasts under the colors of the King of France, and probably 
reached the Hudson River and New England. The next year 
the Spaniard Gomez carried on the search from Florida to Labrador, 
and in 1535 the Frenchman Jacques Cartier passed through the 
Gulf of St. Lawrence and up the St. Lawrence River as far as 
the Indian village on the present site of Montreal. Still no 
Northwest Passage rewarded their search. At the same time the 
Spaniards were pushing up the Pacific coast from Mexico. In 
1542 the Spaniard Cabrillo sailed as far north as Cape Mendocino 
in the present state of California. With these labors of Cortes, 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION 



15 



d'Ayllon, Verrazano, Gomez, Cartier, and Cabrillo, North America 

as well as South America was coming 

into view in broad outline, though the 

possible connection of the new continent 

with Asia, its size, and the geography of 

its interior, were still unsolved problems. 

The interior of North 
America was penetrated 
The Spanish first on the 

in the in- g^^th bv the 
tenor of •' 

North Spaniards, 

America. ^ j^ ^ ^^^^ 

urged on by their rich 
successes under Cortes in 
Mexico and the Pizarro 
brothers in Peru. Three 
expeditions struck into the 
interior. The first, under 
Narvaez, encountered ship- 
wreck at the outset off 
the coast of Florida in 
1528, and disappeared so 
completely that nothing 
was heard of it for eight 
years, 
when four 
survivors, 
who had 
saved 
t h e m - 
selves by 
becoming 
Indian 
medicine 
men, ar- 
rived on 
the Pa- 
cific coast. 
A strange 
tale the 
leader, de 
Vaca, told 




Atl.intic Discov-eries 



of their wanderings, 
of their voyage to 
the western shores 
of the Gulf of Mex- 
ico, of the hunch- 
backed cows on the 
great plains of the 
interior, and of the 
stone cities, which 
we know to have 
been the pueblos of 
the Zuni Indians, in 
what is now the 
southwestern part 
of the United 
States, but 
which the 
Spanish imagi- 
nation seized 
upon as being 
treasure cities 
of fabulous 
wealth, and ro- 
man t ically 
termed the 



i6 THE NEW WORLD 

"Seven Cities of Cibola." In 1540 an expedition under Coronado set 
out from the city of Mexico to conquer these cities. It found the 
grand canons of the Colorado River, the Indian cities or pueblos, the 
hunchbacked cows or buffaloes, the plains east of the Rocky Moun- 
tains, and living on these plains simple wandering Indian tribes, but 
no gold. Somewhere in what is now Kansas or Oklahoma, a thousand 
miles from the coast, a captive Indian woman disappeared from this 
expedition and within a week's time fell in with another expedition 
of white men from the Atlantic. This latter company, led by de Soto, 
had set out in 1539 from Florida under the inspiration of de Vaca's 
story, had traversed the present gulf states of the United States, 
crossed the Mississippi, and entered upon the plains of the interior, 
but like that of Coronado, had failed in its mission of finding gold. In 
two more expeditions the Spaniards set out for the interior of North 
America, but in each case turned back. They had explored the 
country at great sacrifice, only to retire and devote themselves to 
Mexico, Central America, and South America. They were seeking 
gold, not homes in the wilderness, and when the gold did not appear 
the whole vast country north of the Gulf of Mexico seemed to them 
nothing but a disappointment. Still, many a Spanish missionary 
came to the country to labor for the conversion of the Indians, and 
to-day the remains of their mission buildings may be seen in the 
southwestern part of the United States. 

De Vaca and probably Pineda had sailed past the mouth of the 
Mississippi without detecting the existence of the great river. The 
actual discovery of this interior waterway fell to de Soto, 
covery of the who crossed it probably somewhere near the present city 
Mississippi of Memphis, Tennessee, in 1541. From the first descrip- 
tion of the Mississippi by one of De Soto's men, we read: 
"The river was almost half a league broad. If a man stood still on the 
other side, it could not be discerned whether he were a man or not. 
The river was of great depth, and of a strong current; the water was 
alwaies muddle; there came down the river continually many trees 
and timber." De Soto, who died of fever on the expedition, was buried 
in the river which he had discovered. 

The available places in which to search for the Northwest Passage 
were fast becoming restricted. Toward the end of the sixteenth cen- 
The ex lo- tury, since nothing promising had been found farther 
ration of the south, English explorers tried the Arctic regions. Sir 
Arctic Seas. Martin Frobisher, in three voyages, 1576-1578, entered 
the strait that bears his name and also Hudson Strait. John Davis, 
1585-1587, discovered Davis Strait and got as far as 72° north lati- 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION 



17 




tude. William Baffin found Baffin Bay on the west of Greenland 
in 1615. 

Henry Hudson, in two voyages under an English company, failed 
in his efforts to strike directly across the North Pole to Asia by way of 

the waters on the east of 



Greenland; in a third 
voyage, which he made 
in the service of the 

Dutch East The voyages 

India Com- of Henry 

1 Hudson, 
pany, he 

changed his course from 
the northern seas and in 
his little ship, the Half 
Moon, in 1609 explored 
the river which has since 
been called by his name. 
Whereas Verrazano, al- 
most a century earlier, 
had seen only the mouth 
of this river, Hudson 
sailed up its waters prob- 
ably as far north as the present site of Albany. On a fourth and last 
voyage, while again in the service of the English, Hudson explored Hud- 
son Bay in the north, but, proving less successful than Columbus and 
Magellan in dealing with mutinous sailors, he was set adrift in a small 
boat by his own men to die in that distant waste of waters. 

In 1616 the Dutchman, Schouten van Horn, found and sailed 
around the cape at the extremity of South America, xhe discov- 

now known as Cape Horn. The English sea rover, ^l^ of Cape 
1 -1 1 • • TV T 1 Horn in the 

Drake, had seen the cape without roundmg it; Magel- Antarctic 

Ian never knew of its existence. regions. 

The work of exploring the northern part of the interior of North 

America was carried on mainly by Frenchmen, who took up the task 

somewhat less than a century after the Spaniards in the 

south. After a visit to the Isthmus of Panama, where, 

like Balboa, he suggested the digging of a canal between 

the two oceans, Samuel de Champlain, in the name of 

France, explored the St. Lawrence River i6o3-i6o4,and in 

1 604-1 606 explored and mapped the New England coast as far south 

as Cape Cod. In i6og he discovered and explored Lake Champlain, 

while Hudson, at the same time, coming up from the south, was on the 



The Half Moon 



Samuel de 
Champlain's 
explorations 
in the inte- 
rior of North 
America. 



i8 THE NEW WORLD 

Hudson River not many miles away. Here occurred one of those far- 
reaching events that have changed the course of history. Confronted 
with the necessity of taking sides in an Indian war, Champlain allied 
himself with the Ottawas and Hurons on his north and west against 
the Iroquois of the south. The Iroquois, astounded by the display 
of the white man's terrible firearms, were defeated, but they were a 
powerful tribe, and their hatred of the French, which dated from that 
battle, helped to prevent the latter from making their way into the 
valley of the Hudson. Inasmuch as the success of the French, both in 
their explorations in the wilderness and in their fur trade with the 
Indians, depended on the friendly cooperation of the natives, the 
hostility of the powerful Iroquois, who occupied in general what is now 
the state of New York, effectually barred the way of the French in that 
direction and forced them to penetrate the interior farther north along 
the banks of the St. Lawrence. Partly as a result of the hatred thus 
engendered, the Iroquois allied themselves with the Dutch and later 
with the English, who were the rivals of the French in this region. 

Pushing westward north of the lands of the Iroquois, a Recollect 
friar, Le Caron, reached Lake Huron in 1615, and in the same year 

Champlain reached Lake Huron and Lake Ontario, 
discovery of Lake Michigan was explored by Jean Nicolet in 1634, while 
the Great Fathers Jogues and Raymbault were on Lake Superior 

in 1 64 1. Lake Erie was probably discovered by a trader, 
Joliet, in 1670. In the same year La Salle discovered the Ohio River, 
and in 1673 Father Marquette and Joliet traversed the Great Lakes 
to the western shores of Lake Michigan, ascended the Fox River, and 
by a short and easy portage reached the Wisconsin, whence they came 
to the Mississippi and paddled south on its waters to the Arkansas. 
Their explorations took them far enough down the Mississippi to enable 
them to determine that it emptied into the Gulf of Mexico. Up to this 
time, though Europeans had been settled on the Atlantic coast for a 
half century and more, and though civilization there had proceeded so 
far as to have founded Harvard College, knowledge of the interior 
was so vague that it was believed that the "great river" of the interior 
of the continent emptied into the Gulf of California. La Salle ac- 
complished the feat of passing down the length of the Mississippi from 
the Illinois to its mouth on the Gulf of Mexico in 1682. 

Joliet made a map in 1673 which shows to what an extent his coun- 
trymen had enlarged the geographical knowledge of the interior of 
Joiiet's map, North America. In fairly accurate outline this map traces 
^^"^^^ the Great Lakes, and the Mississippi and its leading 

tributaries. The Northwest was still unexplored, and the lingering 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION 



19 



[(NWA rOTI\iS TFJU^\RVAl ORBLs (,R()Ijt\fHK 




za=^.-.fii=^ ^.S:^ -!Tr=^^ 



The Western Hemisphere, by Henry Hondius, 1630 
From the Hondius-Mercator Atlas of 1633. One third original size. 



20 THE NEW WORLD 

impression of a possible connection by land with Asia was not yet dis- 
pelled; in fact, Jean Nicolet took with him on his journey in 1634, 
when he discovered Lake Michigan, a richly embroidered oriental 
gown, that he might enter the court of the ruler of the Chinese in 
proper garb. Both French and English civilization had been estab- 
lished on the Atlantic seaboard of the new continent for many years 
before the idea was finally abandoned that China was to be reached 
overland. 

The country west of the Mississippi to the Pacific yielded to ex- 
plorers slowly; indeed it was not till the nineteenth century that this 
part of North America was adequately mapped. The Frenchmen, 
the La Verendrye brothers, discovered the Rocky Mountains in 1743, 
Captain Cook mapped the Pacific coast far into the north in 1778, 
Vancouver explored the same coasts in 1792, in the same year Cap- 
tain Gray, in the Columbia from Boston, entered the Co- 
the expiora- lumbia River, and less than fifteen years later, in 1804- 
tion of North 1805, Captains Lewis and Clark, coming overland from 
the Mississippi and the Missouri to the Columbia and the 
Pacific, made the first recorded journey across the continent. 

The fact of the separation of Asia and North America was not made 
apparent until the Danish captain, Vitus Bering, came overland from 
The discov- Europe across Siberia in the service of Russia, built a 
eryofBe- fleet on the Pacific, and discovered Bering Strait in 1728 
ii''i728and and Alaska in 1741. The finding of the Northwest Pas- 
of Alaska gage fell to Robert McClure in 1854, long after its dis- 

covery had ceased to be desired for commercial purposes. 
From this record of three and a half centuries it will be seen that the 
discovery of North America was not a single incident but a long-con- 
tinued process; and the crude maps, which periodically set 
discovery of down the newest outposts reached from time to time, 
North tgii a story of human energy and daring, of hardships 

overcome, of patient endeavor and slow reward, from the 
beginning to the end of the long episode. The slow progress of Span- 
ish, French, English, and Danish explorers in completing the outline 
of North America may be contrasted with the half century required by 
the Spanish alone for tracing the coasts of South America. 



GENERAL REFERENCES 

Channing, United States, I; Fiske, Discovery of America; E. P. Cheyney, European 
Background; Parkman, Pioneers of France; Bourne, Spain in America; Winsor, 
America, II-IV. 



DISCOVERY AND EXPLORATION 2r 



SPECLVL TOPICS 

1. The Northmen. American History Leaflets, s', Contemporaries,!, 28-iS'> Origi- 
nal Narratives — The Northmen, etc., 3-76; J. Fischer, Norsemen in America; Avery, 
United States, I, 74-96; 

2. Columbus's Own Account of His First Voyage. American History Leaflets, 
i; Contemporaries, I, 35-40; Source Book 1-3; Old South Leaflets, V, 102, IX, 8; Original 
Narratives — The Nonhmcn, etc., 77-278; Channing, United States, I, 1-33; Avery, 
United States, I, 134-151. 

3. The Life of Columbus. Bourne, Spain in America, 8-19; also Lives, 
by C. K. Adams, W. Irving, J. B. Thatcher, and J. Winsor. 

4. Magellan's Voyage, Epochs, I, 82-92; J. A. Robertson, Antonio Pigafetta, 
Magellan's Voyage; Winsor, America, II, 591-612; Channing, United States, I, 51-54. 

5. De Soto and the Mississippi. Epochs, I, 147-156; W. Lowery, Spanish Settle- 
ments, 213-252; Original Narratives — Spanish Explorers, 127-272; Channing, United 
States, I, 67-71; Avery, United States, I, 285-293; Trail Maker Series, De Soto. 

6. The ExploraI-ions of Marquette. Thwaites, Father Marquette; The Jesuit 
Relations, LIX, 86-211; Old South Leaflets, VII, 2; Epochs, I, 186-196; Contemporaries, 
I, 136-139- 

7. The Explorations of La Salle. Epochs, I, 199-206; Hart, Contemporaries, 
I, 140-144; Ogg, Opening of the Mississippi, 81-132; JouteVs Journal of La Salle's 
Last Voyage, 1684-1687; Parkman, La Salle and the Great West; Source Book, 96-98; 
Trail Maker Series, La Salle. 

8. Champlain and the Battle with the Iroquois. Epochs, I, 179-185; Avery, 
United States, II, 1-19; Source Book, 14-17; Trail Maker Series, Champlain. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

Longfellow, Skeleton in Armor and Sir Humphrey Gilbert; Tennyson, Columbus; 
Lowell, Columbus; Lanier, Columbus; Cooper, Mercedes of Castile. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

What are the proofs that the earth is round? Trace the history of the belief in 
the rotundity of the earth. In what did Cokimbus's greatness consist? What 
inventions during the Renaissance added to the zest for geographical exploration? 
From what different sources did Columbus derive aid and inspiration for his voyages? 
Compare the achievements of Columbus, Cabral, and Cabot. What part did the 
Itahans play in the discovery of America? What explanations can you give, from 
your knowledge of European history, for the failure of the Italians to found colonies 
in America? Summarize the claims of Spain, France, and England to the new 
continent. Name the discoverer of each of the following: the West Indies, North 
America, South America, the Great Lakes, the Mississippi, the Hudson, the St. 
Lawrence, the Ohio, and the Columbia Rivers, the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific 
Ocean, the Northwest Passage. What different mariners early sailed along the Cali- 
fornia coast? 

Follow in chronological order the progress of geographical knowledge concerning the 
coast of North America. Trace the steps in the discovery of the coast line of South 
America. Give the leading events in the exploration of the interior of North America 
by the Spaniards and by the French. 



CHAPTER II 
THE NATIVE AMERICANS AND THEIR COUNTRY 

THE PEOPLE 

Light is thrown on the nature of the native Americans by their 
attitude toward the first white men whom they beheld. "Come, 
How the come, you will see men from Heaven!" they shouted to 

Indians one another when Columbus first passed among them, 

tbe^first "Whereupon both women and men, children and adults, 

Europeans. young and old, laying aside the fear they had felt a little 
before, flocked eagerly to see us, a great crowd thronging about our 
steps, some bringing food and others drink, with greatest love and 
incredible good will." Such is Columbus's own description of his first 
reception by the Indians. In Mexico there was a tradition of a Fair 
God, who was to come from Heaven and set up his kingdom on the 
earth, and to the simple-minded natives Cortes was this god; at one 
place fifty Mexicans were sacrificed alive to the Spaniards as to deities, 
and cakes dipped in the blood of the victims were offered them to eat. 
In California the Englishman Drake was worshiped with the greatest 
reverence and importuned to remain there and become King of thr 
land. Cartier and Verrazano were gods to the Indians, and so were the 
first Europeans in different parts of America. Nothing more pathetic 
can be found in history. It was the genuine and unconscious tribute 
of barbarism to a superior civilization, before bitter experience had 
taught distrust of the intruders. The Indians had never seen horses or 
firearms; and to their simple minds a European, seated on a strange 
monster and discharging a gun with a flash of fire, must truly have 
seemed like a being from another world, wielding the thunderbolts of 
Heaven. 

The Indians depended upon agriculture, hunting, and fishing for their 
food, and led a wandering life, moving on to new abodes when the soil 
The Indian of any one section and the supply of game and fish became 
mode of life, exhausted. Women performed the manual labor, while 
the men passed their time in the chase and in almost perpetual 
warfare. Their houses were generally clustered in temporary stock- 
aded villages, and were of different styles in different parts of the 



THE NATIVE AMERICANS AND THEIR COUNTRY 



23 



country. In the region between the Great Lakes and the Hudson 
River, these habitations were usually long one-story structures, covered 
with bark, in the central and western part of the continent tents of 
buffalo skins and round mud houses, and in the southwest caves and 
even stone pueblos. These pueblos, sometimes accommodating as 




An Indian Village 
From the picture by A. Bierstadt 

many as five thousand people, were more substantially built than the 
other Indian dwellings, and give evidence of a slight advance in civiliza- 
tion. 

The Indians in physical stature were in general fairly tall, with 
cinnamon-colored complexion, small, dark, deep-set eyes, high cheek- 
bones, straight black hair, and a scanty beard. In dignity physical 
of physical bearing they far surpassed most uncivilized characteris- 
races. Long habit in the chase had endowed them with 
unusually keen senses of sight, smell, and hearing, extraordinary 
ability to endure hardship and pain, and great swiftness of foot, but 
in most other physical characteristics they were decidedly inferior. 
In competition with the Europeans they were seldom able to undergo 
hard work long and steadily, and from the point of view of civili- 
zation their manual labor was almost useless. A sad phase of their 
physical inferiority was manifest in the terrible mortality among them 



24 THE NEW WORLD 

from the diseases brought from Europe, principally smallpox, measles, 
and yellow fever. Probably the most destructive of these was small- 
pox, which early spread among them and in some localities carried off 
half the population. The number of deaths from this scourge was 
greatly increased because in their ignorance the victims often plunged 
themselves into cold water for relief. Measles, too, desolated whole 
sections. The same sad tale is brought from other parts of the world, 
where civilization and barbarism have met for the first time. 

There was marked disparity in the degree of civilization attained 
by the Indians in different parts of the country. Those living in 
Indian Central and South America, notably the Mexicans and 

civilization. Peruvians, were much farther advanced than the others. 
They built large communal houses and temples, worked in gold, silver, 
and copper, and invented picture writing. In general, most of the 
tribes displayed some skill in decorative art and pottery, basketry and 
weaving; but their music was primitive, they possessed no great poems 
or literary works, and were not truly civilized. 

The Indians were essentially religious. They worshiped spiritual 

powers with prayers and offerings, in some instances with human 

sacrifices. They believed in a future life where the 

eigion. happy hunting grounds continued the pleasures of earth, 

and in this belief they placed the trappings of the warrior on his grave. 

Although the Indians practiced a primitive sort of agriculture, 
their farms, if such a term may be applied to their shifting places of 
Native abode, differed widely from the farms of civilization, 

plants. Their implements, like their weapons, were of stone, or, 

rarely, of bronze. The native crops were maize, beans, pumpkins, 
squashes, sunflowers, watermelons, and tomatoes. Maize, or Indian 
corn, on. many an occasion saved the lives of the white settlers in 
time of need, and is now America's greatest crop. From the Indians, 
also, Europeans derived tobacco and white and sweet potatoes. Native 
dishes added by the Indians to the world's menu were mush and 
succotash; indeed, the words pumpkin, squash, mush, and succotash 
are of Indian origin. Sugar was obtained from the maple trees, but 
there was no sugar cane; rice was found in some regions. 

The Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, like 
those of the eleventh century, found North America a natural vine- 
Native yard. In a description of New England of 1632 Thomas 
fruits. Morton wrote: "Vines of this kind of trees there are 
that beare grapes of three colors, that is to say: white, black, and red. 
The country is so apt of vines, that, but for the fire at the spring of 
the year, the vines would so overspreade the land, that one should 



THE NATIVE AMERICANS AND THEIR COUNTRY 25 

not be able to passe for them, the fruit is as bigg of some as a musket 
bullet, and is excellent in taste." Edward Winslow in 1621 wrote from 
Plymouth in New England, of "plums of three sorts, white, black, 
and red, being almost as good as a damson." John Smith at about 
the same time in Virginia saw "some few crabs, but very small and 
bitter." Another Englishman, writing of New England in 1634, 
well described the choke cherry, which he found there: "The cherrie 
trees yield great store of cherries which grow on clusters like grapes; 
they be much smaller than our English cherrie, nothing near so good if 
they be not fully ripe, they so furre the mouth that the tongue will 
cleave to the roofe, and the throat wax hoarse with swallowing those 
red bullies (as I may call them) being little better in taste. English 
ordering may bring them to an English cherrie, but yet they are as wild 
as the Indians." Strawberries were mentioned as early as 1635: 
"Strawberries in abundance, verie large ones, some being two inches 
about; one may gather half a bushel in a forenoone." "Strawberry 
bread," made of corn meal mixed with berries, was a favorite Indian 
dish. There were found also in America native raspberries, black- 
berries, gooseberries, currants, elderberries, cranberries, blueberries, 
and huckleberries. Most of the plums, apples, and cherries now in 
domestic use, and all apricots, peaches, oranges, figs, and dates are of 
European origin. 

There was no native American flax, hemp, or silk, though there was 
a native cotton. In the American fields and forests the Europeans 
first found vanilla, cayenne pepper, quinine, arrowroot, other 
chocolate, and cocoa. America was rich in nuts, among American 
them hickories (including pecans), chestnuts, walnuts, 
butternuts, hazelnuts, beechnuts, and acorns. 

Of domestic animals the Indians used the llama and alpaca in 
South America; there was a native North American turkey; but horses, 
mules, cattle, sheep, hogs, goats, chickens, ducks, geese. Domestic 
and even dogs, cats, and rats, though not mice, were animals, 
brought by the Europeans. 

The number of native languages when the Europeans arrived cer- 
tainly reached several hundred, and the number of tribes was corre- 
spondingly large. In the extreme west of the present United The various 
States were the Apaches and Shoshones; on the Great t"bes. 
Plains, the Siouan tribes, Omahas, lowas, and Pawnees; in the North- 
west, the Blackfeet, Cheyennes, Mandans, and Crows; on the Upper 
Mississippi, the Ojibwas and Illinois; in the South, the Chickasaws, 
Choctaws, Creeks, Seminoles, and Cherokees; in the Ohio Valley, the 
Miamis, Delawares, and Shawnees; on the Potomac, the Powhatans; and 



26 THE NEW WORLD 

south of the Great Lakes, the Iroquoian family of Mohawks, Onondagas, 

and Senecas. It is roughly estimated that at the time of the discovery 

of America there were within the present limits of the United States one 

hundred and fifty thousand Indians east of the Mississippi, and two 

hundred and fifty thousand west of that river, or about four hundred 

thousand in all. This is nearly twice as many as at the present time. 

There have been theories that the Indians were the remnants of the 

so-called lost tribes of Israel, or that they were sprung from Chinamen 

Tu • t-. who had drifted across the Pacific or had crossed on the 
Theories as to 

the origin of chain of the Aleutian Islands, which form a broken line 
the Indians. between the two continents, but modern scholarship in- 
clines to the view that the Indians originated in America, or at least 
had lived here for many thousands of years. Once, too, it was beheved 
that the Mound Builders, the makers of the curious artificial mounds of 
earth between the Mississippi River and the Allegheny Mountains, were 
a distinct race from the Indians. When opened, however, the mounds 
disclose the same arrowheads, tomahawks, axes, hammers, jugs, 
kettles, and pipes, which we have learned to associate with the Indians 
of the historic period, and it is now generally believed that the Mound 
Builders were Indians, who had lived here from time immemorial. 

THE COUNTRY 

The first Europeans in America were doomed to many a disappoint- 
ment in the matter of climate. The effects of the Gulf Stream, which 
The climate carries the heat of the Gulf of Mexico away from North 
of America. America to warm the shores of western Europe, were at 
first not recognized by the newcomers. Their natural expectation was 
that in a given latitude the climate of America would approximate 
that of Europe. New England, from June to September, did appear 
to have a climate similar to that of northern Spain or southern France 
in the same latitude. A New England winter, on the other hand, 
resembled that of Norway or Sweden, while Labrador, which was 
only as far north as England, had a climate which in Europe was 
known only within the Arctic Circle. The death toll in the winter- 
time among the first colonists who came to America was heavy. 

Low-lying shores, cut by numerous navigable streams, rendered 
the Atlantic coast of North America more easy of access than was the 
Rivers and Pacific coast. The majority of these Atlantic rivers were 
mountains. short and swift, and possessed of water power well suited 
to the manufacturing which was to spring up in later centuries. The 
interior of the continent could not easily be penetrated along these 
streams, for the reason that some few miles inland they were usually 



THE NATIVE AMERICANS AND THEIR COUNTRY 27 

broken in their course by rapids and falls, which were difficult of pas- 
sage. Still farther inland they lost themselves in a mountain barrier, 
the Appalachians, which extended parallel to the seashore as far 
south as Georgia. The waters of the St. Lawrence cut this barrier in 
the north, but it was early found that this waterway, filled with rapids 
and frozen over for nearly half the year, was not all that could be 
desired as a key to the interior of the continent. Nor was the Mis- 
sissippi a much more satisfactory route inland, since hidden shoals 
rendered its ascent so difficult that navigation of its waters could be 
easily accomplished only southward with the current. Confronted 
by these conditions, the European settlers quite naturally contented 
themselves at first with the coast. They did not explore the passes 
over the mountains to the west till almost a century after their first 
settlement, and they did not push through these barriers in any con- 
siderable numbers for another half century. To encircle the south- 
ern extremity of the Appalachians was for a long time rendered 
impossible by the presence in this region of the formidable Creeks 
and Cherokees. 

When the advancing tide of settlers at last poured over the moun- 
tains in the latter part of the eighteenth century, they found stretching 
before them to the west, for thousands of miles, the great ^j^^ j^^. j.- 
interior plains of the country, passage of which was easy, of North 
The high and difficult Rocky Mountains and the Sierra ^'°^"'=^- 
Nevada and Coast Ranges, farther on toward the Pacific, were reached 
so late that their conquest was facilitated by the newly contrived rail- 
roads. Throughout the great sweep from the Atlantic to the Pacific 
there were no insurmountable natural barriers, so that division of the 
country into a number of rival political units was not a geographical 
necessity. So far as mere physical features were concerned, the way 
was open for one united nation of continental dimensions. 

Fortunately the Europeans found the struggle for existence in 
America comparatively easy. The Atlantic Ocean, from Newfound- 
land to Cape Cod, contained an abundance of sea food, Natural 
particularly the valuable codfish and mackerel, which resources, 
were highly esteemed as early as the days of Columbus and have 
constituted the basis of a valuable industry down to the present time. 
On land the fertile soil responded quickly to the efforts of the husband- 
men. As has been well said, raising their own food has seldom been a 
serious problem for the settlers in virgin America. Over and above 
its own needs, the country has usually been able to furnish a surplus 
for consumption abroad. Supplies of game, such as deer, elk, wild 
geese, and turkeys, abounded. The forests, extending as far west 



28 THE NEW WORLD 

as the plains of the interior, furnished an abundance of lumber; and 
everywhere, in forests, streams, and plains, the beaver, otter, sable, 
badger, bufjalo, deer, and other fur-bearing animals yielded rich 
returns to the fur trader. The vast mineral resources of gold, silver, 
copper, coal, iron, and petroleum, though not yielding up their treasure 
to the early settlers, have added immensely to the wealth of the country, 
as from time to time the secret of their existence has been wrested 
from nature. 

The vastness of the new continent surprised the Europeans. Both 

North America, with 8,000,000 square miles, and South America, with 

6,800,000 square miles, are larger than Europe, which 

totals only 3,700,000 square miles. E.xclusive of the 

island possessions, the present area of the United States, 3,600,000 

square miles, is almost as large as the whole of Europe. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

D. G. Brinton, American Race; Parkman, Oregon Trail; Fiske, Discovery, I; 
E. C. Semple, Geographic Conditions; N. S. Shaler, United States; L. Farrand, 
Basis of American History; W. Lowery, Spanish Settlements, 3-26; L. H. Bailey, 
Sketch of the Evolution of Our Native Fruits. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Mound Builders. Fiske, Discovery, I, 140-146; Avery, United States, 
I, 22-62. 

2. The Indians. Curtis, The North American Indian; Old South Leaflets, IV, 
87, 143, and VIII, I, 2,3, 8; Epochs, I, 64-67; Contemporaries, II, 327-336; Osgood, 
Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, I, 527-576; W. Lowery, Spanish Settlements, 27- 
78; Winsor, America, I, 133-444; Avery, United Stales, I, 338-368; Source Book, 
23-25; Trail Maker Series, Five Nations. 

3. The Conquest of Mexico. Fiske, Discovery, II, 213-293; L. Morgan, Monte- 
zuma's Dinner, North American Review, April, 1876; Prescott, Conquest of Mexico; 
Sir a. Helps, Cortcz; Avery, United States, I, 252-262; Winsor, America, II, 349-396. 

4. The Conquest of Peru. Fiske, Discovery, II, 365-426; Prescott, Conquest 
of Peru; Winsor, America, II, 505-572. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

Wallace, Fair God; Longfellow, Hiawatha; Cooper, Deerslayer; Bryant, 
Indian at the Burial Place of His Fathers; Hopkins, Indian Book. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

What practical knowledge did the whites gain from the Indians? Why were the 
Indians overawed by the whites? How did the Indians receive their name? Discuss 
the climate of North America, as compared with that of Europe. 



PART II 
THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

CHAPTER III 
SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE AMERICA 

The word " frontier " has two meanings. First, it is used to designate 
that part of a country which faces another country. Thus the French 
speak of their German frontier, meaning by that the part Meaning of 
of their country which faces Germany. Second, by a the word ^^ 
frontier is meant the edge or border of civilization. As 
civilization pushes into a new region the frontier may be said to include 
the little fringe of settlements on the remote outskirts. In this sense 
early America may be spoken of as the frontier of Europe. The first 
great frontier of which there is definite knowledge was that built up by 
the ancient Greeks, as they spread their colonies along the unoccupied 
borders of the ^Egean and Mediterranean Seas. The Roman Empire 
had a frontier in Britain, in Germany, in Africa, and in other parts 
of the world on the borders of its domain. Then, for a thousand 
years and more, all the known parts of the globe that seemed desirable 
were filled in with people, no more outposts of civilization were erected, 
and the world quite forgot about frontier building till Columbus gave 
to civilization a new opportunity to extend its borders. 

What followed was in reality a grand scramble among the powers 
of Europe for the possession of what were considered the most desirable 
parts of the new continent. Utterly regardless of the ^j^^ gj.3j^^ 
rights of the natives, greedy Europe sliced up America in scramble for 
much the same fashion as it partitioned Africa in the 
nineteenth century. On the present map of Africa there are here 
British colonies, here French, here German, and so on; each power has 
taken what it could, and the native Africans have been little regarded. 
Just so it has been in parts of China until recently, and just so it was 
in the new world of Columbus. 

We shall devote our main attention to those parts of the new frontier 
occupied by the thirteen English colonies which later formed the 
United States of America, but in order to understand the develop- 



3° 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



ment of this portion we must briefly notice those parts of the English 
frontier in America that did not enter into the United States, and 
also the American frontiers of the other European powers. We shall 
see how the different nations of Europe, step by step, made their settle- 
ments in America, and how these struggled with one another in rivalry; 
how the colonies of the English gradually grew larger and more impor- 
tant than the others, how at length, by a revolution, the greater part 
of these English colonies separated themselves from the mother coun- 
try and became the independent nation of the United States of America, 
and how the new nation from time to time added to its area till it 
reached to the Pacific and even to the islands beyond. 

It is necessary at the outset to understand why Europeans ex- 
changed their life in the settled society of Europe for that of the 
Why the American wilderness. In Europe the civiHzation of the 

Europeans time was at its best, while life in America meant a dan- 
came to the ^, , 
frontier in gerous voyage over the sea, exposure to savage races, 

America. ^^d utter abandonment of the comforts of home. Yet 

thousands made the change. Some sought gold and silver and 
improvement in worldly fortune, some sought to extend trade, and 
some to increase geographical knowledge; some went as condemned 
criminals to escape prison sentences, some out of a mere love of 
adventure, and a few to convert the natives to Christianity; but by 
far the largest number fled from overcrowded conditions of life at 
home, from religious persecution, or from the arbitrary rule of tyran- 
nical monarchs. 

The Spaniards planted their first settlements in the West Indian 
Islands while Columbus was still alive. Thence they spread to 
The golden Mexico, to Central America, and to South America, where, 
kingdom of jxi Peru, they found their golden kingdom. When the 
frontier,'^*^ Pizarro brothers captured the Peruvian king, the royal 
Peru. captive, standing in a room twenty-two feet long and 

seventeen feet wide, made a mark on the wall as high as he could 
reach, offering for his freedom gold enough to fill the room up to that 
mark; and this enormous ransom, amounting to $15,000,000 in gold, 
was easily raised, and a large amount of silver as well. 

Mexico was almost as rich. Throughout the seventeenth and 
eighteenth centuries the mines of Peru and Mexico together produced 
annually from $30,000,000 to $40,000,000, and at the 
present time the apparently inexhaustible yield still goes 
on. Spain was rendered wonderfully rich by the influx of treasure 
from her western possessions, and her leadership among the nations 
was assured for almost a century. 



SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE AMERICA 31 

It followed as a matter of course that men were attracted by suc- 
cessful gold hunting, so that it is not strange that the Spaniards left 
what is now the United States, where their search revealed The popula- 
no gold, and flocked by thousands to the more southern g°" °/h^^ 
lands. St. Augustine in Florida, the oldest permanent frontier, 
white settlement within the present limits of the United States, founded 
in 1565, and Santa Fe in New Mexico, founded in 1605, marked the 
limits of their northern settlement, and these were both small villages. 
The Spaniards likewise deserted the West Indies, with the exception 
of Cuba and a few of the larger islands, as soon as the scant supply of 
gold there gave out. A census of 1576 revealed the presence in South 
America, or, as it was called. New Spain, of 160,000 Spaniards. To a 
remarkable extent the natives were then living in settled villages, 
attending Christian churches and schools, of which there were hun- 
dreds, and slowly taking on the ways of civilization. Progress was 
perhaps facilitated by the intermarriage of the races. There were 
mestizos, born of Spanish fathers and Indian mothers; mulattoes, of 
white and negro parentage, for negroes were early brought from Africa; 
quadroons, three-fourths white and one-fourth black; octoroons, 
seven-eighths white and one-eighth black; and zambos, of negro and 
Indian parentage. 

An unfavorable side of the Spanish dealings with the new races 
was the enforced labor of the latter. At first in the West Indies, under 
Columbus himself, who started the practice, and then Indian 
under his successors, the Indians were enslaved without slavery, 
mercy and treated with the utmost cruelty. An historian, relying on a 
Spanish writer for his authority, thus describes the cruelty perpetrated 
on the helpless natives. "Indians were slaughtered by the hundreds, 
burned alive, impaled on sharp stakes, torn to pieces by bloodhounds. 
.... Once, 'in honor and reverence of Christ and his twelve apostles,' 
they hanged thirteen Indians in a row at such a height that their toes 
touched the ground, and then pricked them to death with their sword 
points, taking care not to kill them too quickly." Gradually, be it 
said to the credit of the Spaniards, conditions were improved and the 
servitude of the Indians was prohibited, though this step was doubtless 
prompted more by the unprofitableness of Indian labor than by humani- 
tarian motives. 

Even before the abolition of the slavery of the Indians had been 
fully accomplished, as soon as it was perceived that the Indians did 
not possess the physical endurance necessary for the African 
hard work of the mines, the stronger blacks of Africa were slavery, 
imported to take their places. A beginning of the new traffic, which 



32 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

was to continue for more than three hundred and fifty years, was made 
in 1502, and soon Africa was yielding up her natives to America by the 
thousand. The slaves of the Greeks and Romans had been largely 
whites, often as refined and intelligent as their masters. In the fifteenth 
century there was hardly a vestige left in Europe of anything that 
could be called real slavery, when suddenly the new negro slavery 
sprang into existence. The Portuguese were the first in modern times 
to make a business of kidnapping the blacks, and upon the Spaniards 
rests the responsibility for their introduction into America. 

The Spaniards were very jealous of their frontier empire. They 
would allow none but Spanish ships to trade with New Spain, and 
Spanish ex- none but Spaniards to enter the country. All trade and 
clusiveness. communication with Europe was to be by way of the 
mother country alone, and this only once a year. Large fleets, some- 
times numbering scores of vessels, annually made the passage back 
and forth over the Atlantic, bearing men, treasure, and supplies. But 
the secret of the fleets could not be kept; rumors of their untold riches 
would not down; and soon every civilized nation was the enemy of 
Spain, waiting for a chance to pounce upon the treasure ships and if 
possible to steal away from her a slice of America. 

So occupied were the Portuguese in building up their trading posts 
in the East Indies, that they established but few colonies in the western 
jjjg world, notably a few in Brazil. As a result of European 

Portuguese wars, the mother country and her possessions were under 
the Spanish yoke from 1580 to 1639, but in the latter year 
this yoke was thrown off, and Brazil again became a Portuguese colony, 
thoroughly Portuguese in language, traditions, and civilization. 

GENER.\L REFERENCES 

Bourne, Spain in America; Fiske, Discovery, II; Sir A. Helps, Spanish Conquest; 
LowERY, Spanish Settlements; Winsor, America, VIII. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

I. Slavery in Spanish America. Fiske, Discovery, II, 427-482; Epochs, II, 
70-75; Winsor, America, II, 299-348; Sir A. Helps, Las Casas. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

\\Tiat arguments can you give for and against the Spanish poHcy of excluding all 
other nations from New Spain? In what respects did the Spanish civilization of 
South America differ from that of the English in North America? 



CHAPTER IV 

ENGLISH AMERICA UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH AND 
THE EARLY STUART KINGS, 1558-1642 

CRUSHING THE SEA POWER OF SPAIN 

Under the wise and powerful leadership of Queen Elizabeth, 1558- 
1603, England became Spain's most troublesome rival. The exciting 
internal and foreign politics, which had absorbed the xherivair 
attention of the nation in the years immediately following of England 
the voyages of the Cabots and had prevented the sailing ^"'^ Spam, 
of more English vessels to the west, were relaxing their hold, and 
England was entering upon a long period of peace, recuperation, and 
expansion. Although small in geographical extent, the little island 
kingdom now boldly disputed Spain's proud claim to the title of the 
first power in Europe and opposed her at every step. When King 
Philip of Spain, with the evident design of adding England to his grow- 
ing dominions, requested Elizabeth's hand in marriage, the Queen, 
suspecting the King's motives, gave his royal highness a polite refusal, 
which incident served to increase the bitterness between their realms. 
Violent differences of religion were another cause of estrangement. 
Protestant England openly lent sympathy and aid to the struggling 
Dutch, whom Philip, champion of the Pope, was attempting to hold 
to Roman Catholicism at the point of the sword. Then, too, England 
coveted the Spanish American frontier and the wonderful treasure ships. 
She was fired with a desire for colonies of her own. 

Said Richard Hakluyt, a leader in the movement in favor of an Eng- 
lish onslaught on the Spanish dominions over the sea: "The plantinge 
of twoo or three strong fortes upon some goodd havens ^j^^ ^^ j 
(whereof there is a greate store) betweene Florida and Cape of Richard 
Briton, would be a matter in shorte space of greater ^ "^'' 
domage as well to his flete as to his westerne Indies; for wee shoulde 
not onely often tymes indaunger his flete in the returne thereof, but 
also in fewe yeres put him in hazarde in loosinge some parte of Nova 
Hispania. — If you touche him in the Indies, you touche the apple of 
his eye; for take away his treasure, which is nervus belli, and which he 
hath almoste oute of his West Indies, his olde bandes of souldiers will 

2,2, 



34 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



soone be dissolved, his purposes defeated, his power and strengthe 
diminished, his pride abated, and his tyranie utterly suppressed." 

Sir John Hawkins, in his good bark the Jesus, on which devout 
prayers were said every morning and every night, was among the first 
The attacks Englishmen to kidnap the blacks in Africa and carry 
of the English them to America for sale. In defiance of every prohibi- 
tion he boldly entered the guarded Spanish ports in pur- 
suit of his trade, to the King of Spain's sore displeasure. One of his 
bravest associates was Sir Francis Drake, and together they engaged 
in many a combat with the 
Spaniards. In a sea fight off 
the present site of Vera Cruz, 
Mexico, the Spaniards cap- 
tured seventy Englishmen, 
burned three at the stake for 
their Protestant faith, and 
cruelly flogged the rest and 
sent them to the galleys for 
life. 

In the Pelican, 1577-15S0, 
Drake passed through the 
Circumnavi- Straits of Magel- 
gation of the Jan to plunder the 
globe by the „ • 1 • -r> 
sea rover, Spanish in Peru 
Drake. qj^ ^J^g -v^rest COast 

of South America. He raided 
various towns, overhauled 
many ships, and took as his 
richest prize the treasure ship, 
Cacafuega, which was on its 
way from Peru to Panama. 

The booty from this one ship amounted to twenty-six tons of silver 
and eighty pounds of gold, while the total value of Drake's booty on 
the entire voyage was well up in the millions of dollars. To guard 
this vast treasure from the Spaniards, who, it was expected, would lie 
in wait for the despoilers on their return, necessitated a homeward 
voyage by unfrequented paths. The circumnavigation of the globe 
was decided upon, and after sailing far north in the Pacific and returning 
to somewhere near the present site of San Francisco, the doughty 
captain and his comrades turned west into the all but unknown waters, 
rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and came back to England. His 
was the second voyage around the world. So far had the hostility 




Sir Fr.\ncis Drake 
From an engraving published in 1587 



UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH 



35 




Drake's "Pelican" or "Golden Hind" 
In this he sailed round the world, 1577-1580 



of England and Spain proceeded by this time that Queen Elizabeth 

not only refused to censure Drake for his attacks on a power with 

which England 

was nominally at 

peace, but even 

took a share of 

the booty. 

Another of 

Drake's exploits 

took place off the 

coast of Spain 

itself, where he 

sailed into the 

harbor of Cadiz, 

defeated the war 

ships on guard, 

burned more 

than a hundred 

vessels, filled his 

own ships with 

booty, and got 

away in safety. In derision it was said at the time that the English 

captain had "singed the King of Spain's beard." 

It was this gathering spirit of "Westward Ho!" that nerved Fro- 
bisher, Davis, Bafhn, and Hudson to venture into the forbidden 
Spanish realms in search of the Northwest Passage to "Westward 
Asia, and that inspired the freebooters Hawkins, Drake, Ho!" 
and their followers to defiance of the Spanish King; in this spirit, 
too, other daring and impatient Englishmen sought to follow 
Hakluyt's advice to plant "twoo or three strong fortes and some 
goodd havens (whereof there is greate store) betweene Florida and 
Cape Breton." 

With the Queen's permission, Sir Humphrey Gilbert made unsuc- 
cessful attempts, 1578-1583, to found a settlement in 
Newfoundland, but at last lost his life in shipwreck, oubert in 
"The way to Heaven is as near by sea as by land," he ^q^"""*^' 
cried out as he sank beneath the waves. He had prob- 
ably selected this northern land for his settlement, because of all places 
on the coast it seemed least exposed to attack by the Spaniards from 
the south. 

England had no more ardent expansionist, Spain no greater enemy, 
than Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, to whom the former's 



36 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



rights were now given. He sent colonists out in 1584 and in 1585 
Sir Walter ^° what is now North Carolina, but both expeditions 



Raleigh's 
attempts to 
colonize in 
North 
Carolina. 




Sm Walter Raleigh 



failed and returned to England. One hundred and fifty- 
men and women, whom he sent on a third expedition 
to the same coast, ut- 
terly disappeared, and 

have come to be known as the "lost 

colony." In this unfortunate com- 
pany was little Virginia Dare, the 

first child born of English parents 

within the present limits of the 

United States. His grant of land, 

which included the entire seaboard 

north from Florida, though still 

claimed by Spain, Raleigh named 

Virginia in honor of Elizabeth, the 

virgin queen ; in spite of the failure 

of his own attempts at colonization, 

he declared of the new land, "I 

shall yet live to see it an English 

nation." 

This persistent English challenge 

of Spain's supremacy in the new world, as well as the continued col- 
lisions of the two powers in the politics of Europe, por- 

of Spain's tended a terrible struggle. In the year 1588 Spain 

\°^'°"*'^® collected the Invincible Armada, the largest flleet ever 
Armada. . ' o 

assembled in the world's history to that time, and sent it 
against her rival. One hundred and thirty Spanish ships swept 
proudly up the English Channel, bearing three thousand cannon and 
thirty thousand men, while seventeen thousand Spanish veterans 
waited in the near-by Netherlands, ready at the first opportunity to 
cross over to the coast of England and reduce her to the power of 
Spain. The fate of England hung in the balance, but she herself had 
mustered an enormous fleet mighty in the power of its cannon and in 
the practical seamanship of its sailors. Chief in command of the 
English fleet was Lord Howard of Effingham, and at his side fought 
Hawkins, Drake, and Frobisher. After fearful storms at sea and des- 
perate fighting the would-be raiders were utterly put to rout, with a 
loss of over eight thousand men against an English loss of scarcely 
one hundred. 

An English frontier in America was made possible by this victory, 
for with the sea power of her rival destroyed England's colonists could 



UNDER QUEEN ELIZABETH 37 

venture over the ocean and struggle for their share of the new world 

with a reasonable prospect of success. The next year ^ ^^ ^.^^^ 

the English further crushed the defeated adversary by frontier in 

destroying over eight hundred Spanish commercial ves- ^°^®"^f 

sels in various parts of the globe. 

Sir Walter Raleigh now left for the west in person. In 1595 he 

reached the northern shores of South America, and returning wrote 

of "a large, rich, and beautiful empire, with the golden Attempts to 

city of Manoa, which the Spaniards call El Dorado." plant an Eng- 

• • r 1 1 1 -rill I'^l^ colony in 

This land had more quantities of gold by manifold than South 
the best part of the Indies or Peru; it had more great ^^^"ca. 
cities than even Peru had when it flourished most." The son of 
Mary, Queen of Scots, who upon the death of Elizabeth in 1603 
became James I of England, for reasons connected with European 
politics adopted the policy of cultivating friendship with Spain; and 
iDy his orders, on a trumped-up charge of treason, the promoter of the 
incursions into Spanish America was thrown into prison, where he 
languished for twelve years. In the interval, however, a half score 
English expeditions got away to search for El Dorado, and Raleigh 
himself was finally released and promised pardon if he would find 
it. He journeyed again to the northern shores of South America 
in 161 7, but found no treasure city and returned home to lose his 
head on the block under the old charge of treason. The English 
then abandoned South America, disgusted at their failure and 
well content to refrain from offering further offense to Spain in that 
quarter. 

During these years other Englishmen had been visiting the shores of 
northern "Virginia," on the coast of what was soon to be called New 
England, and fishermen from Europe were resorting to Early voyages 
these parts in increasing numbers. The explorer, Barthol- to New 
omew Gosnold, with a handful of followers, sailed into '^^^^ 
Buzzard's Bay in 1602, but returned without making a settlement. 
The next year Martin Pring visited the same shores, followed in 1605 
by George Weymouth, who explored particularly the coast of Maine. 
Though no settlements were as yet established in New England, these 
three voyages resulted in increasing the interest of Englishmen in 
that region. 

VIRGINIA 

A change was coming over the colonizing activities of the English. 
Small expeditions sent out by individuals had proved inadequate to 
cope with the difficulties encountered, and were being succeeded by 



38 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

expeditions representing companies of men, whose combined capital 
and resources would mean increased efficiency. By the Virginia char- 
The early ^^^' ^^ grant of privileges, of the year 1606, King James 
charters of created two companies. To one, the London Company, 
irguua. made up of men living near London, he gave the right 

to colonize in Virginia between the thirty-fourth and the thirty-eighth 
degrees north latitude, which was, roughly speaking, between Cape 
Fear and the Potomac River; and the other, called the Plymouth 
Company, composed of men who lived near Plymouth in England, re- 
ceived the right to colonize between the forty-first and the forty-fifth 
degrees north latitude, which was approximately from the mouth of 
the Hudson River to the Bay of Fundy. The land between the thirty- 
eighth and the forty-first degrees was to be open to both companies, 
save that neither could make a settlement in this part within one 
hundred miles of the other. A second charter, granted to the Lon- 
don Company in 1609, added the following confusing words in de- 
scription of the boundaries of its grant, land two hundred miles 
north and south of Point Comfort, lying .... up into the Land, 
throughout from Sea to Sea, West, and Northwest, which were later in- 
terpreted as granting to this colony control of the territory northwest 
of the Ohio River. 

Both the London Company and the Plymouth Company sent out 

settlers in the year 1607; and both at the start met with bad luck. 

Under the patronage of the London Company, three 

of the first Small vessels, bearing one hundred and five settlers, crossed 

settlement at j-j^g Atlantic, and, storm-driven, sought the quiet waters of 
Jamestown. . ' o n 

a river which in honor of their King they called the James, 

and on its banks, thirty-two miles from the mouth, they founded 
Jamestown. The chance selection of the site was unfortunate, for 
the town was surrounded on all sides by low-lying swamps, the fever 
and ague from which reaped an immediate harvest of human lives. 
Furthermore, over one-half of the company were "gentlemen" so-, 
called, men without any definite occupation, who scorned hard work, 
while those who were willing to work had little incentive to do so, inas- 
much as they were obliged to throw the product of their labor into the 
common store, from which all alike, lazy as well as thrifty, drew equal 
shares. In this case, at least, communism proved to be the enemy of 
hard work. There was, too, the ever-present peril of the hostile na- 
tives. Of the 1200 emigrants of 1619-1620, 1000 died on the voyage 
or in the colony within one year; in 1622-1623, the Indians massacred 
347, and 1000 died of disease or starvation. 

The one strong man in the beginning of the settlement was Captain 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 



39 



John Smith, whose wise, fearless, and energetic measures as president 
of the governing council of the colony probably saved the community 
from the fate of the near-by Raleigh settlements. Had captain 
not Smith "striven, fought, and endured as he did, the John Smith, 
present United States of America might never have come into existence," 
says one writer, for it was unde- 
niably the ultimate success of his 
colony that encouraged the Eng- 
lish to further efforts. Before 
coming to America Smith had 
roamed over the various coun- 
tries of Europe as a soldier of 
fortune in search of adventure, 
but here in the wilderness he was 
an example of industry to all. 
He compelled the "gentlemen" 
to work with their hands, con- 
ducted exploring expeditions, 
and carried on successful nego- 
tiations with the Indians for the 
sorely needed Indian corn. He 
had information of the great 
river, soon to be known as the 
Hudson, before Hudson started 
on his memorable exploration of 
that waterway, as appears in his 

letters to Hudson on geographical matters. In the fall of 1609, because 
of a wound which he had received. Smith left Virginia, never to return, 
probably with the conviction that the prospects of the colony were 
dark. Later he explored the New England coast and the West Indies. 
His motto, "To Christ and my country a true soldier and faithful 
servant," was typical of the man. 

Gloomy days followed for Jamestown upon the departure of Smith. 
Of the five hundred inhabitants whom he left only sixty were living 
in the following spring. After this "starving time" the other lead- 
survivors were on the point of abandoning the enterprise, ers in early 
when Lord Delaware, a governor appointed by the Com- ^J'S'i^i^- 
pany, appeared at the mouth of the river with a fleet from England, 
bringing new colonists and an abundance of suppHes. His rule and 
that of Sir Thomas Dale, who followed him and succeeded in breaking 
up communism, brought the little settlement through its dark period, 
and later the cultivation of tobacco ushered in prosperity. 




John Smith 



40 ■ THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

The native tobacco proved to be the most suitable crop for the soil 
of Virginia. Its cultivation, first begun systematically by Sir John 
Tobacco Rolfe, brought a better class of colonists, as soon as it 

culture. became apparent that fortunes, after all, could be made 

in Virginia. Columbus himself had been the discoverer of tobacco 
and had introduced its use into Europe. To stop the spread of the 
habit in England, King James wrote, "A Counterblaste To Tobacco," 
in which he designated tobacco smoking as "the greatest sin"; yet 
the demand for tobacco in England and the supply in America went 
on increasing. The shipment of 40,000 pounds in 16 19 reached 
1,500,000 pounds annually in a few years. 

Dutch traders engaged in bringing African slaves to the Spanish 
settlements farther south, where such labor had proved distinctly 
Slavery in profitable from an economic point of view, unloaded the 
Virginia. gj-gt cargo of negro slaves in Virginia in 16 19, and from this 

event the institution of black slavery in the United States took its begin- 
ning. Few at the time saw anything questionable in the system. By 
1660 Virginia had two thousand negro slaves and four times that 
number of "indentured servants," the latter being poor whites who 
paid their transportation charges from Europe by binding themselves 
out to a form of slavery for a term of years. 

In the same year, 1619, the people of Virginia for the first time 
took part in the making of their own laws, when, at the bidding of the 
Company, they sent two representatives from each town 
legislative and plantation to form a House of Burgesses, which was 
assembly in ^q ]-,g their legislature. Twenty-two members came 
together in the church at Jamestown in the presence of 
the governor of the colony, and after prayer by the minister proceeded 
to business "to the glory of God and the good of this plantation." The 
first laws enacted punished "idleness, gaming, drunkenness, and excess 
in apparell," ordered every householder to plant corn, mulberry trees, 
flax, hemp, and grapevines, and commanded all to attend divine serv- 
ice on the Sabbath on pain of heavy fines. This beginning of popular 
government on the frontier, although originating not in the insistent 
demands of the settlers themselves but in the provisions of the London 
Company for their colonists, ushered in a new epoch in colonial admin- 
istration. The same idea of the right of the people to make their own 
laws later prevailed throughout all the English colonies in America and 
became the basis both of the present state governments and of the 
Federal government of the United States. 

After seventeen years of control in Virginia, the London Company 
was deprived of its charter by the King in 1624 and relieved of all 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 



41 



further responsibility for the Virginia settlers. Instead of receiving 
appointment from the Company, the governor of the change of 
colony was now appointed by the King, who assumed com- government 
plete control. Virginia therefore became a royal colony, '" irgmia. 
whereas so long as it was governed by a company or corporation it had 




Jamestown, Va., in 1622 
From an old drawing printed at Leyden by Peter Vander, 1707. 

constituted a corporate colony. In taking this step His Majesty was 
doubtless moved by the fact that his Puritan enemies, who had by this 
time become a troublesome factor in English politics, had gained the 
ascendency in the councils of the London Company and had granted 
to the colonists their popular law-making assembly. James was doing 
all that he could in England to curb the House of Commons, and the 
setting up of a similar representative law-making body in an English 
colony must have been repugnant to him. In rescinding the charter 
of the Company the King did not, however, do away with the Vir- 
ginia legislature. He probably intended to take this step, but he died 
the following year, before any definite action was taken. His son and 
successor, Charles I, retained the House of Burgesses, probably moved 
by the hope of securing from it a monopoly of the increasingly profit- 
able tobacco trade. 

NEW ENGLAND 

It will be recalled that when the London Company planted its first 
settlers on the James in 1607, the Plymouth Company set out at the 
same time to make a settlement in the northern part of the King's 



42 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

Virginian domain. The former, as we hav^e seen, succeeded in its 
The failure of enterprise after serious discouragements at the start, but 
the Plymouth the latter failed miserably. Under the leadership of 
northern George Popham, brother of the Chief Justice of Eng- 

Virginia. land, the first settlers of the Plymouth Company reached 

the mouth of the Kennebec River on the coast of Maine, built a fort 
in which they passed the winter, and the next spring returned to 
England. One bleak Maine winter was enough for them. Seven 
years later, at the instigation of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the Plym- 
outh Company sent John Smith, the hero of early Virginia, to ex- 
plore the coast line that fell within its grant. He skirted along the 
coast and completed an excellent map, in which he made the first use 
of such common geographical terms as New England, Plymouth, 
Cape Ann, Cambridge, and Charles River; in his narrative, too, are 
found the Indian names " P'ennobscot," " Pemmayquid," " Sagadahock," 
"Kenebecka," and "Massachusets." Champiain had gone over 
the same ground only a few years before in behalf of the King of 
France. The Plymouth Company did not try to follow up Smith's 
explorations by a second attempt at settlement, and in 1620 it lost its 
charter to another company, known as the Council for New England, 
in which, as in its predecessor. Sir Ferdinando Gorges was the leading 
spirit. 

The colony of Plymouth, which was the first permanent colony set 
up in New England, was sent out neither by the Plymouth Company 
Religious ^^^ ^V ^^^ Council for New England. It owed its origin 

persecution to religious persecution. Such was the intolerant spirit 
in England, common in the England of the seventeenth century, that 
thousands who could not follow the majority in their religious beliefs 
and practices fled for freedom to the frontier in America as to a place 
of refuge. As has been said, "Ever since the age of stone hatchets, 
colony planters have been drawn from the ranks of the uneasy." 

After Martin Luther broke away from the Roman CathoHc Church 
in Germany in the early part of the sixteenth century and formed the 
The effects in beginning of the Protestant group of churches, a quarrel 
Engird of arose between King Henry VIII of England and the 
tant Refor- Pope, which ended in the formation of the present Church 
mation. of England, quite independent of the Pope at Rome. 

Dissension arose as to what should be the nature of the new church. 
King Edward VI, 1547-1553, was in general loyal to the new church as 
his father had established it. His sister, Queen Mary, 1553-1558, 
on the other hand, was an ardent Roman Catholic and sought to rein- 
state the power of the Pope throughout the realm. Her efforts failed, 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 43 

though she sought to enforce them by bitter persecutions and even 
burnings at the stake. Under Queen Ehzabeth, 1558-1603, the third 
and last of the children of Henry VIII to ascend the throne, the Act 
of Supremacy was passed by Parliament, definitely divorcing the Eng- 
lish Church from Rome, and requiring all the clergy and all holding 
political office to recognize the Queen as "the Supreme Governor" of 
the Church. The Act of Uniformity provided for uniformity in wor- 
ship, requiring the use of the Book of Common Prayer and enacting 
that the ornaments of the church and the vestments of the clergy 
should be those sanctioned under Edward VI. 

These arrangements did not satisfy all the reformers. The Puritans 
originated in the class of Protestants, who fled for temporary refuge 
from the persecutions of "Bloody Mary" to various xhe Puritan 
German, Dutch, and French towns, and to Geneva, Swit- and the 
zerland, where they imbibed the religious views of John ^paratists. 
Calvin. Returning to their English homes at the accession of Eliza- 
beth, they contended for a purer prayer book and a purer form of wor- 
ship, as they expressed it. Though willing to accept a state church 
and to pay taxes for its support, they desired to purify it of ceremonies 
that reminded them of the Roman Church; they opposed the use of the 
cap and the surplice in the church services, the making of the sign of 
the cross, the use of the ring in the marriage ceremony, and kneeling 
at the sacrament. The Queen and the majority of the nation clung 
to these forms because they loved them as a part of the church wor- 
ship. Most of the Puritans in Elizabeth's time had not reached the 
point of separation from the Established Church. That branch of 
the Puritans, however, called Independents or Separatists, not only 
contended for a purer form of worship, but went farther and insisted 
that each congregation should be complete in itself and govern itself, 
independent of outside control. Unlike the majority, they were not 
willing to be included within the Established Church, but wished to 
separate from it entirely and form a new church. 

Only the strongest-minded and the stoutest-hearted took the radical 
separatist position, and faced the fines, imprisonment, and even death 
which such a course often entailed. Loyalty to the 
Established Church was regarded largely as identical with ©f the^iepa- 
loyalty to the sovereign, its head, and an attempt was H^jf^j° 
made to compel all to obey the royal commands in ecclesi- 
astical as well as in civil affairs, lest disobedience in church matters, if 
unchecked, lead to disobedience in civil matters and even to the down- 
fall of the government. The procession of exiles from England for 
conscience' sake started in the early days of Elizabeth's reign, when in- 



44 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



dividual Separatists from time to time sought refuge in Holland, then 
the most tolerant of civilized countries in matters of religion. Year by 
year they went in larger numbers. Elizabeth's successor, James I, re- 
jected a petition of the Puritans praying for changes in the church, and 
scornfully declared that he would make all conform to the established 




The Brewster House, Scrooby, England 

The house of William Brewster was the first house of worship of the Scrooby 
church (organized in 1606), the members of which fled to Holland in 1608, and 
finally emigrated to New England in 1620. 

church or "harry them out of the land." In 1608 the entire con- 
gregation of a country church at Scrooby, in the north central part of 
England, reenforced by individuals from different sections of the 
country, moved to Leyden, Holland, where they formed a church and 
remained for twelve years. Although they enjoyed complete freedom 
of worship in their new home, as true sons of Old England the refugees 
saw with regret that their children were turning from their native 
language to that of the Dutch and were losing the manners and cus- 
toms of England. Some of them, too, who were not prosperous in 
business, desired to try their fortunes elsewhere, and some were eager 
to spread the Gospel to the heathen of America. So they decided to 
become pilgrims again and seek a new home across the seas. 

The exiles were attracted by the stories of the fertility of the soil 
and the favorable climate of the northern shores of South America, 

and in making their plans they first considered these 
out of the regions as a possible place of settlement, but fearing the 
AnSrica ^° Spaniards they gave this up and selected a spot on the 

coast of North America near the mouth of the Hudson 
River. Though they set sail as voluntary colonists, under the 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 45 

patronage of no company, the London Company gave its consent 
to their choice of location, which came within its grant; and further- 
more, a group of London merchants advanced the needed funds as a 
business venture. The emigrants went first to England and embarked 
for their long voyage at Southampton in 1620 on the Speedwell and 
the Mayflower; but the former was soon found to be unseaworthy, and 
the two vessels put in at Plymouth, where as many as could reembarked 
on the Mayflower alone. 

The voyage proved a difficult one. Near its end "shoulds and 
roring breakers" barred the way to the intended destination, so that 
of necessity plans were changed and the Mayflower Arrival in 
finally "rid in saftie" off Cape Cod, at what is now America. 
Provincetown, Massachusetts, entirely outside the domain of the 
London Company. "Being thus arived in a good harbor and brought 
safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed ye God of heaven, 
who had brought them over ye vast & furious ocean, and delivered 
them from all ye periles and miseries thereof, againe to set their feete 
on ye firme and stable earth, their proper elemente." They had come 
to their journey's end not in the pleasant springtime, as was the lot 
of the newcomers at Jamestown, but in cold and bleak November. 
The Mayflower remained off Provincetown for more than a month, 
and here, in the little ship. Peregrine White was born, the first New 
Englander. 

When on December 21 they arrived at Plymouth, which was 
selected as the permanent site of the new home, there was still no 
general landing; the women and children and the dis- xhe settle- 
abled men spent the entire winter on shipboard, while ment at 
the able-bodied men passed a few hours every day on land, y^outh. 
building log huts. Before spring was over one-half the little company of 
one hundred and two people were dead. "It pleased God to visit us 
with death daily, and with so generall a disease that the living were 
scarce able to burie the dead," said their own historian. Governor 
Bradford. For a number of years they suffered from the evils of com- 
munism, as did the settlers in Jamestown. 

Early in the first spring the hearts of the Pilgrims were surprised 
and gladdened by the greeting of a friendly Indian, who approached 
with the words, "Welcome, Englishmen!" an expression that he had 
probably learned from English fishermen on the coast of Maine. His 
name was Samoset; and Samoset brought Squanto, who taught the 
newcomers to raise the native Indian corn; Squanto in turn brought 
Massasoit, a chief of the tribe of the Wampanoags, who made with the 
settlers a friendly treaty of peace which was kept for over fifty years. 



46 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

Among the leaders of the Pilgrims were William Brewster, the 
elder, who remained an influential colonist for many years in the new 
The leaders home; John Carver, the first governor, who died dur- 
of the ing the hardships of the first winter; William Bradford, 

grims. ^j^^ second gov^ernor and historian of the colony; Miles 

Standish, their military leader; and Edward Winslow, Governor Brad- 
ford's successor. 

The people of the United States look back with admiration upon 
the Pilgrim Fathers, because as a whole, amid trying circumstances, 
The democ- they displayed unusually high ideals, unconquerable 
racy of the courage, and a wonderful love of democracy. "It is not 
^"™^' with us as with men whom small things can discourage," 

wrote Bradford. Left by chance to themselves outside the limits of 
the London Company, which had given them their right to land, and 
without authority from the King or from the Council for New England, 
within whose grant by chance they found themselves, they "solemnly 
and mutually in the presence of God and one of another" agreed on 
shipboard, in what is known as the Mayflower Compact, to set up a 
pure democracy, in which the people were to make their own laws 
and select their own officials. When in twenty years there came to be 
too many voters for all to assemble in one place for purposes of govern- 
ment, they adopted the representative principle already in operation 
in Virginia. Even then for a number of years the people of the town 
of Plymouth and of the surrounding towns, which together constituted 
Plymouth Colony, enjoyed the referendum, that is, the right to accept 
or reject the laws passed for them by the legislature. As long as 
Plymouth existed as an independent colony, up to 1691, she never 
possessed a charter. 

King James I zealously endeavored to the end of his reign to carry 
on the established Church of England as he had received it from 
Elizabeth; and, like the latter, in carrying out his policy 
ties of King he was vigorously opposed by the non-conforming Puri- 
Charies with ^^j^g a^j^^j Separatists. Under the next King, Charles I, 
the Puritans. , , , . r 1 t • ^ \ i- • 

who succeeded his father James m 1625, the religious 

discord continued, and in 1628 growing political discontent added to 
the troubles of the King. After waging a bitter quarrel with Parlia- 
ment over the respective rights of Crown and Parliament, Charles 
had the humiliation of being forced to sign the Petition of Right, the 
first limitation on the royal powers passed by Parliament for one 
hundred and fifty years. This prohibited to the King certain long- 
standing practices, to wit, certain forms of taxation, arbitrary impris- 
onment, billeting of soldiers on the people and martial law in time of 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 



47 




48 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



peace. The act was but a temporary expedient, for the King broke it 
almost at once; in fact he had probably never intended to keep it. 

Those who had for years stood out against the King in ecclesiastical 
matters, were now, as their enemies had predicted would be the case, 
Arbitrary ^^^ leaders in the political opposition to the King. In 

government anger at the stubborn spirit displayed against him, 
in ngan . Charles dissolved Parliament in 1629 and imprisoned 
five of its members who were the most outspoken in their opposition 




The B.4RKER House at Pembroke, Mass. 
The first house in America of which there is any authentic record. Built in 1628. 

to him. For the next eleven years, 1629-1640, he ruled the kingdom 
without a Parliament and imposed arbitrary taxation upon the people 
without the consent of their representatives. His two leading advisers 
in the crisis were Sir Thomas Wentworth, later known as the Earl 
of Strafford, and Archbishop Laud. Both these statesmen were loyal 
Englishmen, but their loyalty was to the King and not to the people. 
The watchword of both was "thorough," which meant unceasing 
persecution of their opponents. 

Rather than submit to the new tyranny, now civil as well as ecclesi- 
astic, from fifteen to twenty thousand "uneasy" Puritans migrated 

„. „ . to eastern Massachusetts in the short period of ten years, 

The Puritan ^ ^ ^, , r ix^ ■, t^ 

emigration to 1030-1640. 1 he new colony of Massachusetts Bay re- 

^tt^^B*^^"" ceived from the Council of New England a grant of land 

extending from three miles south of the Charles River to 

three miles north of the Merrimac River and westward to the South 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 



49 



Sea. The King, probably not knowing that a colony of Puritans 
was to be established, granted a charter of unusually liberal char- 
acter, which practically entrusted full powers of government to the 
commercial company sending out the colony. 

In 1628, before the charter was secured, John Endicott, with a 
small party of settlers, had founded Salem on Massachusetts Bay 
After the charter was granted, John Winthrop, who had Puritan 
been elected governor by the Massachusetts Bay Com- settlements, 
pany, arrived in New England 
on June 12, 1630, with eleven 
ships and nine hundred colonists, 
and Boston, Newtown (later Cam- 
bridge), Charlestown, Watertown, 
Roxbury, Dorchester, and other 
near-by towns were quickly set- 
tled. Seventeen vessels in all ar- 
rived from England in this year, 
bearing two thousand settlers. 
Only a few of the newcomers 
found their way to Plymouth, 
but there always existed the best 
of feeling between Plymouth and 
Massachusetts Bay, for both the 
Pilgrims and the Puritans were 
of the same sturdy thrifty stock 
of English yeomen, devoted to 
similar religious and political 
ideals. 

The colonists of Massachusetts Bay, like their brethren at Plym- 
outh, loved self-government, though they were far from displaying 

the spirit of democracy manifested at Plymouth. Like 
....... 1-1 T«T 1 The govern- 

Virgmia m its earliest days, Massachusetts was a cor- ment of 

porate colony. Instead of remaining in England, as did Massachu- 
the members of the company governing Virginia, certain 
of the Massachusetts company, legally empowered to carry on its 
affairs, joined the emigrants to New England and brought their char- 
ter with them, that they might always have in America legal proof of 
their rights. The colony of Massachusetts and the present state of 
Massachusetts sprang from this commercial company. 

The charter vested the government of the colony in the stock- 
holders of the company, the freemen as they were called. In 1630 
there were in the colony only twelve of these freemen, that is, in a 




John Winthrop 



50 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

cluster of settlements numbering two thousand people, only twelve 
were endowed with the right to vote. The government of the few 
Aristocracy ^^^ ^^^ perpetuated. In one month in 1631 one hun- 
versus dred and eighteen persons were admitted into the com- 

emocracy. pany as freemen with the right to vote. It was provided 
at the same time that in the future only those should be made voters 
who were members of the Puritan Church, for by this time the Puritans 
in America had taken the separatist course of organizing their own 
church. This was not democracy in the modern sense, but under 
it the number of voters gradually increased. Governor John Winthrop 
defended the restriction of the suffrage in these words: "The best 
part is always the least, and of that least part the wiser part is always 
the lesser." It was the original intention to transact public business 
in an assembly of all the freemen; but as the number of freemen 
increased and the foundation of new settlements dispersed them, law- 
making and the choosing of the governor were left to a board of assist- 
ants elected by the freemen. It was even provided that the assistants 
should not be elected every year but should hold their seats during 
good behavior. This was too much like oligarchy for the independent 
frontiersmen. When, at one time, a tax was levied by the assistants, 
the freemen of Watertown objected and insisted on a more representa- 
tive form of government. Thereupon, fifteen years after the adoption 
of the representative principle in Virginia, and four years before its 
adoption in Plymouth, provision was made that the freemen should 
choose the governor and the assistants each year, and should send 
delegates from each town to the general court or law-making body. 
At first the board of assistants and the deputies of the towns met 
together as the general court, but in 1644 they separated into two 
bodies, the assistants forming the upper house and the deputies the 
lower house. 

As in the case of Massachusetts Bay and of Plymouth, it was 
religious persecution that led to the founding of Rhode Island, only 
The found- ^^^^ time it was persecution as practiced by the Puritans 
ing of Rhode themselves. They had migrated to secure the right to 

^ ^^ ' worship God as they saw fit, but not with the idea of 

tolerating in their midst those desiring to worship in a different 
way. Among the first to suffer from the rigors of the narrow Puritanism 
was a young clergyman named Roger Williams. This apostle of re- 
ligious liberty deemed it wrong to swear an oath; he denied that the 
state had the right to compel men to be religious, and he upheld the 
doctrine of the complete separation of church and state. The Puritans 
resented his stand on these matters, and in the year 1636 Williams 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 



SI 



was banished from the colony for his too independent views. He 
would not return to England, but with a small following he plunged 
farther into the wilderness, founded the new colony of Rhode Island, 

and piously called the first settle- 
ment Providence. "The doctrine of 
persecution for the cause of con- 
science," he wrote, "is most evidently 
and lamentably contrary to the doc- 
trine of Jesus Christ." 

The next year Williams was joined 
in his enterprise by Anne Hutchinson, 
who with a handful of Anne Hutch- 
followers was obliged to »°son. 
leave Massachusetts because she dis- 
agreed with the Puritan ministers on 
questions of theology, and because 
she practiced woman's rights by 
freely criticizing and discussing their 
views in public. Mrs. Hutchinson 
remained in Rhode Island a few years 
and then moved farther into the wil- 
derness to the western part of Con- 
necticut, where she was killed by the 
Indians. Of a surety these colony 
planters of Rhode Island were 
"drawn from the ranks of the un- 
easy." 

It is needless to say that Rhode 
Island enjoyed democracy, and, as 
long as Roger Williams ^he govern- 
lived, religious freedom, ment of 

, 11 J •- u I Rhode Island. 

or, as he called it, soul 

liberty." After the leader's death, 
the colony retrograded so far as to exclude Roman Catholics. As 
might be expected, for many years the orthodox of Massachusetts 
would have no dealings with the inhabitants of Rhode Island. In the 
first days at Providence, Williams and his followers bound themselves 
together for the purposes of civil government by a compact similar to 
that of the Pilgrims at Plymouth, and proceeded for many years 
without a royal charter. 

Connecticut also was settled by the "uneasy" people of Massa- 
chusetts. Outposts in the rich valley of the Connecticut River had 




Statue of Roger Williams 



52 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



been set up as early as 1634. In June of the disturbed year of 1636, 

soon after the exile of Williams, and while the colony of Massachu- 

. ^, setts Bay was lashed by the growing controversy over 

Another new -' -^ ^^ Y r 1..T 1 1 • 

frontier, Mrs. Hutchmson, Thomas Hooker of Newtown and his 

Connecticut, ^^tire congregation set out on foot for the Connecticut 
valley, driving their cattle before them and carrying their household 
goods in wagons. They founded Hartford on the Connecticut, while 
near-by, on the same river, other congregations from Dorchester and 
Watertown settled Windsor and Wethersfield. The reasons for this 
migration are not altogether plain. Disapproval of religious intoler- 
ance doubtless was a leading factor, and it is known that to Governor 
Winthrop's position on the suffrage Hooker opposed more demo- 
cratic sentiments. "In matters which concern the common good," said 
Hooker, "a general council chosen by all, to transact the business 
which concerns all, I conceive most suitable to rule and most safe for 
the relief of the whole." There may be truth, too, in the assertion 
that Hooker was jealous of the overshadowing influence of his rival 
fellow-minister, John Cotton of Boston. 

In their new home the refugees were more tolerant in religion than 
were their brethren in Massachusetts, and they loved and practiced self- 
Th V rn- government. With no authority but their own desires, the 
ment of three towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield united 

Connecticut, themselves into a republic under an instrument known as 
the Fundamental Orders, the first written constitution in the history 
of the United States. Connecticut, like Rhode Island, conducted its 
affairs for more than a quarter of a century without a charter. 

The colony of New Haven was founded in 1638. The year before, 
John Davenport, a Puritan minister from England, and Theophilus 
The New Eaton, a wealthy merchant of his congregation, with a 

Haven few followers, landed in Boston, but on account of the 

colony. spirit of controversy in that town decided to move on and 

found a settlement of their own. With a keen eye to commercial 
possibilities they searched out a good harbor and founded the town of 
New Haven, and here in the wilderness, under Eaton as the first 
governor, they set up a Bible Commonwealth, a theocracy more bigoted 
and less democratic than Massachusetts Bay. Other towns sprang 
up, including Milford, Guilford, Branford, and Stamford, and all to- 
gether formed the colony of New Haven. 

Early New Hampshire was settled largely by colonists from Massa- 
New chusetts. In 1622 the Council for New England issued to 

Hampshire. JqJ^j^ Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges a grant of land 
extending from the Merrimac River to the Kennebec River. Mason 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 53 

took as his share that part west of the Piscataqua, which developed 
into New Hampshire, Gorges that part east of the Piscataqua which 
came to be known as Maine. There were early settlements in New 
Hampshire at the mouth of the Piscataqua River, at Dover, and at 
Exeter, but there was no charter from the King, no legal provision for 
the government of the land granted by the Council. Believing that 
they were outside the Hmits of Massachusetts, the settlers of Exeter, 
under their leader, John Wheelwright, a brother-in-law of Mrs. Anne 
Hutchinson, drew up a compact of government similar to the May- 
flower Compact. Inasmuch as many of the people of Exeter had been 
banished from Massachusetts, they were probably glad in this way 
to take affairs into their own hands. Massachusetts, however, pro- 
ceeded to claim the New Hampshire towns as her own, which she 
could do by virtue of the uncertainty as to her own northern boundary 
line. It will be recalled that by the King's charter this line was to 
run from the Atlantic to the Pacific from a point three miles north of 
the Merrimac, " to the northward of the saide river called Monomack, 
alias Merry mack, or to the northward of any and every parte thereof." 
When Massachusetts ascertained that this stream actually rose far in 
the north, she formally annexed New Hampshire as coming within 
her grant, and in 1641 New Hampshire ceased her protests against 
the act and became a part of Massachusetts. 

Gorges in Maine succeeded where Mason in New Hampshire 
failed, so far as royal favor was concerned, for Maine received a sepa- 
rate charter in 1639. The new colony was to extend from „ . 
the Piscataqua to the Kennebec, and one hundred and 
twenty miles inland, with Gorges himself as proprietor, so that Maine 
became a proprietary colony in distinction from a corporate or from 
a royal colony. A loyal supporter of the Church of England, Gorges 
was the sworn enemy of Puritan Massachusetts. ' Few were attracted 
to Maine, though there were small settlements at Pemaquid, Monhegan 
Island, Saco, and on the neck of land where Portland now stands; 
and in 1677 the heirs of Gorges sold out their claims to Massachusetts 
for £1250. The district of Maine remained a part of Massachusetts 
throughout the colonial period and even after the formation of the 
United States of America. 

Usually in the history of America, colonizing expeditions into the 
wilderness have resulted in wars with the Indians, the original occu- 
pants of the soil. The year after Hooker and his flock i^^^^^ ^^^^ 
journeyed into Connecticut the Pequot Indians rose up to 
assert their ownership of the land. A company of eight hundred whites, 
with three hundred Indian allies, led by Captain John Mason and 



54 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

Captain John Underhill, contrived to surprise them in one of their 
stockades, and only seven Pequots lived to make their escape. More 
than six hundred were butchered in cold blood. 

Forty years later all New England was involved in an Indian war, 
known as King Philip's War, in which the English lost six hundred men, 
King twelve hundred houses, and thousands of cattle, — in all 

Philip's War. nearly a million dollars' worth of property; three thousand 
Indians were killed; King Philip himself, son of their old friend Massa- 
soit, betrayed by one of his own men, was shot down by stealth, his 
head and hands cut off, and his body quartered and hung up on four 
trees. The New Englanders had surely not learned the gospel of mercy. 

Although the heavy immigration into Massachusetts exerted a 
powerful influence in keeping the natives quiet, constant vigilance 
The New Eng- °^ ^^^ P^'^^ °^ ^^^ colonists was necessary. In 1643, 
land Con- under the leadership of Massachusetts and without the 
e erauon. sanction of the King, the four New England colonies of 
Plymouth, Massachusetts — which now included New Hampshire — 
Connecticut, and New Haven, united to form the New England 
Confederation for mutual defense against the Indians in their midst, 
against the French on the north in Canada, and against the Dutch 
on the west in New Netherland. Rhode Island, the despised refuge 
of Roger Williams and Mrs. Hutchinson, and Maine, the pro- 
prietary colony of the unfriendly Gorges, were excluded by the jeal- 
ousy of Massachusetts. The Confederation was the result of the 
same necessity of military defense that later drove thirteen of the 
British colonies together in 1776. It persisted as a unifying influence 
for forty years, and proved an effective agency in waging the struggle 
against King Philip. In the conduct of the affairs of the Confedera- 
tion each colony had two votes, though on several important occasions, 
like that in 1653, when an attempt was made to declare war on the 
Dutch settlers in the Valley of the Hudson, while the English and the 
Dutch were fighting one another in Europe, the two votes of Massa- 
chusetts outweighed the other six and defeated the project. Inasmuch 
as the levies of men and supplies in time of war were apportioned 
among the four colonies according to population, it was not unreason- 
able for Massachusetts to have the controlling voice. 

In the records of the proceedings of the Confederation for the year 
1643 were recommendations that "every man may keep by him a good 
Proceedings gunn & sword, one pound of powder with foure pounds 
of the Con- of shott with the match or flints suitable," that there be 
e eration. ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ same bushel measure in all the colonies, that 
military drill be held six times a year, that Massachusetts in case of 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 55 

war send one hundred and fifty men, Plymouth thirty, Connecticut 
thirty, and New Haven twenty-five, and that a general collection be 
taken "for the mayntenance of poore scholars at the colledg at Cam- 
bridge." It was ordered " that no person in any of the united colonies 
shall directly or indirectly sell to any Indians either powder, shott, 
bullets, guns, swords, daggers, arrowheads, or any ammunition." 

"In all history," says one historian, speaking of early New England, 
" there has been no other instance of colonization so exclusively effected 
by picked and chosen men." The colonists themselves importance 
pointed to their origin with pride. A New England of New 
colonial governor declared, "God sifted a whole nation "^^ 
that he might send choice grain into the wilderness." Since from these 
early New Englanders a large portion of the present population of 
the United States has sprung, and in view of the fact that they have 
exercised a vast influence upon the history of the country in general, 
their character is of national interest. 

One of the finest things about the Puritans was their devotion to 
the cause of education. Hardly had they reared their first homes in 
the wilderness, when they started their public schools. Eduction 
"It being one of the chief projects of Satan to keep men among tiie 
from the knowledge of the Scripture," ran an early law 
of Massachusetts, "to the end that learning may not be buried in the 
graves of our fathers, in church and commonwealth, the Lord assisting 
our endeavors; it is therefore ordered" that every town of fifty house- 
holders or more appoint one to teach "all such children as shall resort 
to him to read and write." A town of one hundred families was to 
set up a grammar school in which youths might be "fitted for the 
University." In 1636, by order of the legislature, a college was founded 
in Newtown or Cambridge, that " the light of learning might not go out, 
nor the study of God's word perish." This institution was called 
Harvard College in honor of the Reverend John Harvard, who endowed 
it with his own library of 260 volumes and a legacy of £700. 

The New England Puritans, fleeing from persecution for conscience' 
sake, were essentially religious. They exhibited a strange mixture of 
austere pietism and broadminded service to the state; The religious 
yet with all their estimable qualities and their devotion to ^P"^*- 
popular education and self-government, they showed traits of cruelty 
and narrowness that were anything but admirable. They were cruel 
in the extreme in their treatment of the Indians; and like most of the 
contemporary world they were intolerant toward those who differed 
from them, as was evidenced in their dealings with Roger Williams and 
Mrs. Hutchinson. 



56 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

The Quakers were victims of this intolerant spirit. The fact that 
this inoffensive sect was suffering in England for non-conformity to the 

laws concerning religion, just as the English Puritans 
the Quakers themselves had suffered, did not deter Massachusetts from 
m New falling upon the Quakers with great severity. In an old 

book entitled "A Declaration of the Sad and Great 
Persecution and Martyrdom of the . . . Quakers in New England" 
it is recorded that "twelve strangers in that country . . . received 
twenty-three whippings, the most of them with a whip or three cords, 
with knots at the end," that "two were beaten with pitched ropes, the 
blows amounting to an hundred and thirty-nine," that "there were 
twenty-five banishments, upon the penalties of being whipt, or having 
their ears cut, or branded in the hand, if they returned," that five were 
"kept fifteen days (in all) without food," that one was "laid neck and 
heels in Irons for sixteen hours," that one was "very deeply burnt in 
the right hand with the letter H, after he had been whipt with above 
thirty stripes," that "three had their right ears cut by the hangman 
in the prison," that an order was made " that those who had not where- 
withal to answer the fines that were laid upon them (for their Con- 
sciences) should be sold for Bond men and Bond women to Barbados, 
Virginia, or any of the English plantations," that eighteen were "ban- 
ished" and "three of the servants of the Lord were put to death." 

The sternness of the Puritan character found gruesome expression 
in their cruel punishment of witchcraft. The belief was general in 
_(.. , , those days that certain individuals could bewitch others, 

that is, could exercise supernatural influence over them, 
and in common with the larger part of Christendom the Puritans 
acted on the Biblical injunction, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to 
live." Witches had already been hanged in England and occasionally 
executions had taken place in Massachusetts for the crime of witch- 
craft, when a strange outburst of the superstition occurred in Salem 
Village in 1692. Young girls, readers of wierd tales, began to imagine 
strange things. They fancied themselves bewitched and accused 
certain old women of being witches and of casting the evil spell over 
them. The charges were believed, and before the excitement abated 
nineteen victims were hanged, one was pressed to death, and more 
than a hundred were cast into prison and cruelly tortured. Revulsion 
of feeling came shortly; men perceived their delusion; and the intensity 
of repentance was as deep as the original excitement. The Puritan 
extremes, terrible as they were, were generally to be ascribed to a 
passion for duty. 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 



57 



MARYLAND 

Fourteen years after the Pilgrim Fathers reached Plymouth, while 
Massachusetts was fast filling up with Puritans, and before Rhode 
Island and Connecticut were founded, three hundred Eng- 
lishmen, many of them Roman Catholics, under the patron- Catholic 
age of Cecilius Calvert, Lord Baltimore, planted a colony ^^^^\ '". 
on the north of Virginia, which they called Maryland, in 
honor of Henrietta Maria, the queen of Charles I, and dedicated as 
a refuge for distressed Romanists. The 
refuge was sorely needed, for the laws of 
England at this time were severe against 
men and women of this faith. The first 
settlement in Maryland was called St. 
Mary's, and thither flocked hundreds of 
Catholics during the next few years; 
but while the members of this church 
were given the warmest welcome, people 
of other religions were not excluded and 
practical religious freedom was enjoyed 
by all. Maryland's Toleration Act of 
1649 formally guaranteed freedom in 
religion to all who professed "to believe 
in Jesus Christ." Although this law 
does not appear extremely liberal ac- 
cording to the standards of the present 
day, at that time it was in advance of 
most of the world. It was probably enacted for the double purpose of 
attracting settlers of the Protestant faith and of warding off from the 
colony attacks by the Puritans, who were then controlling England under 
the leadership of Oliver Cromwell. 

The practice of "soul liberty" in Rhode Island and the enactment 
of the Toleration Act in Maryland are the first important landmarks 
in the history of the development in America of that 
religious freedom which is the pride of the United States 
to-day. Later, William Penn forwarded the movement in 
Pennsylvania, and religious freedom to a certain extent was permitted in 
New Netherland and subsequently in New York. In the next century, 
with the assent of every state in the newly formed national govern- 
ment, the first amendment was written into the Constitution of the 
United States, declaring that Congress "shall make no law respecting 
an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." 




SCALE OF MILES 



E.'uaY VraciNiA and Maryland 



Religious 
liberty in 
America. 



58 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

Maryland, like Maine under Gorges, was a proprietary colony. 
There were, as we have seen, three kinds of colonies, — royal, proprie- 
Th three tary, and corporate. In the first, which was directly under 
kinds of the Control of the crown, while representative law-making 

CO omes. ^^^^ ^^ ^ ^.^j^^ permitted to the people, the King in fact 

largely controlled even that function of government, by the exercise 
of the veto power over the acts of the legislature and by virtue of his 
appointment of the governor and judicial oflficials. On the other 
hand, in the proprietary colonies, although these were a part of the 
King's domain, the reins of government were given over by the King 
to proprietors or groups of proprietors in a charter defining their 
powers. The proprietors were allowed to choose the governors and 
usually to exercise their own pleasure as to whether or not popular 
law-making bodies should be allowed. Finally the corporate colonies, 
so called because the charters were given to companies or corporations, 
were practically self-governing, even electing their own governors. 

THE WEST INDIES 

Stretching away to the southeast from Florida for hundreds of miles 
lie some three thousand small coral reefs and islands, known as the 
The geoK- Bahama Islands. South of these and in general parallel 
raphy of the to them lie the four larger islands of Cuba, Jamaica, His- 
est n les. p^niola or Santo Domingo, and Porto Rico, and con- 
tinuing from these farther to the southeast, in a great sweep that does 
not end until the mainland of South America is reached, comes another 
long thread of small islands which geographers for convenience have 
divided into two groups: first, those nearer to Porto Rico, called the 
Leeward Islands; and second, those farther to the east and exposed to the 
winds and storms of the Atlantic, called the Windward Islands. A hun- 
dred or more miles to the east of the Windward Islands, quite alone by 
itself, lies the island of Barbados. North of all these islands and seven 
hundred miles straight east from Virginia, are the Bermuda Islands. 

Though discovered by the Spaniards soon after Columbus, the 
Bermuda Islands remained uninhabited and almost unknown till 1609, 
The various when they were occupied by one of the early expeditions 
island on its way to Virginia; and at once they entered into 

set ements. competition with Virginia for settlers. The English 
arrived in the Leeward Islands at St. Christopher or St. Kitts three 
years after the Pilgrim Fathers reached Plymouth in New England, and 
in the next ten years they succeeded in spreading to a number of the 
surrounding islands, chief of which were Nevis, Montserrat, Antigua, 
and St. Vincent. 



UNDER THE EARLY STUARTS 59 

The Bahamas were discovered and then abandoned by the Spaniards 
in the earliest days of American exploration. The first permanent 
settlement in these islands was made in 1629 by English The 
Puritans fleeing from the persecutions at home. Bahamas. 

Jamaica, the largest of the English West Indies, was taken from the 
Spaniards in 1655, and under its new masters was immensely pros- 
perous. Says one historian, "As easy a road to riches 
as could be found by an Englishman of the Georgian 
epoch was to own an estate in Jamaica; and by appointing an agent 
it was not necessary for him always to live there, although there were 
many who loved the country and made it their home." 

Fertile Barbados, twenty-one miles long and fourteen miles wide, 
was settled five years after Plymouth. At the end of its first eleven 
years it numbered six thousand inhabitants and in fifty ^ i^ j 
years one hundred and fifty thousand, or more than all 
the English colonies of the mainland at that time. Her connection 
with the mainland was intimate, for almost every vessel, sailing between 
England and America, took the southern route and called at her port, 
while on certain occasions she furnished hundreds of her citizens as 
immigrants to the mainland. Growing more rapidly than any other 
British frontier settlement, Barbados was universally recognized as 
the most populous and richest English colony in America throughout 
the seventeenth century. The chief crop was sugar. Says one writer 
in describing the island, "Never had the earth beheld such a number 
of planters collected in so small a compass, or so many rich productions 
raised in so short a time." 

It is necessary to take the West Indies into consideration in the study 
of the history of the United States in order to escape the erroneous but 
common impression that all the important English xhe pia^e of 
colonies in America were situated on the mainland and to t'?® West in- 
gain an adequate comprehension of the interaction of the lish colonial 
different parts of the English colonial empire on one history, 
another. In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries England 
regarded her rich and beautiful islands as her most valuable American 
possessions. Down to 1763 there were probably more commercial 
expeditions from England to the West Indies than to the near-by 
mainland. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Channing, United Slates, I-II; Osgood, Colonies in the Seventeenlh Century; 
FiSKE, New England, and Old Virginia; E. Eggleston, The Beginners of a Nation; 
N. D. Mereness, Maryland; Winsor, America, III-IV. 



6o THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. Sir Francis Drake. Epochs, I, 156-167; Contemporaries, I, 81-88; Original 
Narratives- — Early English and French Voyages, 149-174; Winsor, America, III, 59- 
84; Avery, United Stales, I, 324-327; Source Book, 9-11. 

2. John Smith and Early Jamestown; Old South Leaflets, VII, 167; Contem- 
poraries, I, 209-217; Original Narratives — Early Virginia; Winsor, America, III, 
127-167; Epochs, II, 49-78; Avery, United States, II, 33-80; Source Book, 11-14, 
33-37- 

3. The Pilgrim Fathers. Old South Leaflets, VII, 153, and IV, 142; Epochs, 
II, 86-100; Contemporaries, I, 340-365; Original Narratives — Bradford's Plymouth; 
Winsor, America, III, 257-294; Avery, United States, II, 103-138; Source Book, 39-41. 

4. Roger Williams. Epochs, II, 131-135; Contemporaries, I, 402-406; Osgood, 
Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, I, 224-236; A\try, United States, II, 267-277. 

5. The Founding of Connecticut. Avery, United States, II, 303-338; Source 
Book, 51-52; FiSKE, New England, 122-128; A. Johnston, Connecticut. 

6. Early New Hampshire and Maine. Source Book, 55-57; Fiske, New England, 
120, 154, 259, and 275; H. S. Burrage, The Beginnings of Colonial Maine. 

7. Manners and Customs of the Puritans. Fisher, Men, Women, and Man- 
ners, I, 117-242; A. M. Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England, Home Life 
in Colonial Days, and The Sabbath in Puritan New England; Contemporaries, 1,313- 
339, and 467-516; Sparks, Expansion, 48-68. 

8. The First Thanksgiving. C. L. Norton, Magazine of American History, 
December, 1885; Mary Lowe, New England Magazine, November, 1904; R. M. 
Schauffler, Thanksgiving ; W. D. Love, The Fast and Thanksgiving Days of New 
England. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERL\L 

NoYES, Drake; Henty, Under Drake's Flag; Tennyson, Raleigh; Kingsley, West- 
ward Ho; M. Johnston, To Have and To Hold; J. Austin, Standish of Standish, and 
Betty Alden; Longfellow, Courtship of Miles Standish, John Endicott, and Giles Corey; 
Hawthorne, Grandfather' s Chair, Part I, Maypole of Mcrrymount, Endicott and the 
Red Cross (in Twice Told Tales) , and The Scarlet Letter; Holland, Bay Path; Whit- 
tier, Cassandra Southwick, John Underhill, The Exiles, Banished from Massachusetts, 
King's Missive, Witch of Wenham, and Mabel Martin; Stimson, King Noanelt. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

In what sense is it true to say that the defeat of the Spanish Armada was the 
opening event in the history of the United States? Compare conditions in early 
Jamestown with those in early Plymouth. What was the origin of representative gov- 
ernment in Virginia, in Plymouth, and in Massachusetts? Why did the people of 
Massachusetts so readily disperse and set up colonies in distant parts of New England? 
Describe the treatment accorded to the Indians in colonial New England. Account 
for the devotion of New England to popular education. What were the Connecticut 
Blue Laws? Why did not the Spaniards destroy early Jamestown? What made the 
diiTerence in the prosperity of early Plymouth and early Massachusetts? What were 
Raleigh's services to English colonization? What prominent explorers visited the 
New England coasts before the Pilgrims? Distinguish the words Puritans, Separatists, 
Pilgrims, Non-conformists, and Dissenters. What important Indian wars took place 
in colonial New England, and what was the effect of these wars on the growth of the 
colonies and on their relations to one another? 



CHAPTER V 
DUTCH, SWEDISH, DANISH, AND RUSSIAN AMERICA 

The little republic of Holland was not a likely spot for the seat of a 

colonial empire. Her home dominions were not much larger than the 

present state of Rhode Island, the greater part of her _ , . 

• 11, 1 1 1 r 1 , • 1 r The begin- 

territory lay below the level of the sea, and m the year 1609 nings of 

she was emerging from a terrible struggle for liberty S^n^'^n 

against Philip II of Spain. With bravery and persistence 

she had made her independence good, and by fierce attacks on the 

outlying possessions of her persecutor had gained possession of the 

Spice Islands of Asia, which Spain had then only recently acquired from 

Portugal. 

The situation of Holland made seamen of her people, her seamen 

made her commerce, and her commerce was the foundation of her 

colonial empire. After the acquisition of the Spice Islands ^ ^ 

, . ^^ .. ^ . The Dutch 

her prosperity grew apace. Her tradmg vessels were on in the valley 

every sea. Through the exploration of Henry Hudson ^ *^® 
in 1609, while he was temporarily in their employ, the 
Dutch gained a foothold in the new world in the Valley of the Hudson 
River. The erection of rude huts by Dutch traders on Manhattan 
Island followed in 1614, marking the beginning of what is now the 
largest city on the continent, while stations for trade with the natives 
were opened on the Delaware, the Hudson, and the Connecticut Rivers, 
and at intervening points. Albany, called Fort Orange by the Dutch, 
was one of the chief centers of this trade. Thus in the early years of 
the seventeenth century the Dutch, the English under their various 
leaders, and the French under Champlain, were dealing blows to the 
waning power of Spain in North America. 

In 162 1 Holland granted a charter to the Dutch West India Com- 
pany, organized for purposes of trade, and authorized it to plant and 
to govern colonies. The Company appointed as the first New 
governor of New Netherland, its colony along the Hudson, Netherland. 
Peter Minuit, who purchased the island of Manhattan from the Indians 
for twenty-four dollars' worth of beads and ribbons. Under his 
despotic rule and that of his successors, Wouter Van Twiller, William 

61 



62 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



Kieft, and Peter Stuyvesant, the people had but little share in the 
government of the colony. 

Although situated in the richest and most important river valley 
on the Atlantic coast, New Netherland as a colony did not prosper. 
Slow In fifty years it possessed hardly two thousand inhabi- 

progress. tants, while New Amsterdam, its largest town, on the 

fi;nest harbor of the continent, numbered only eight hundred. The 




The St.adt Hl^'s, First City H.\ll in New York 
Copyright, 1904, by Chas. Beseler Co., N. Y. 

Dutch were not attempting to build up their frontier in the ordinary 
way. They were not seeking new outposts where their fellow-citizens 
might come and live, but were rather maintaining trading posts for 
purposes of commercial gain. A heterogeneous collection of people 
was called together by the trading facilities of the colony; in 1643 
eighteen different languages were spoken among the four hundred 
inhabitants of New Amsterdam alone. A slight attempt at agriculture 
was made in the patroon system, whereby lords or "patroons" were 
granted thousands of acres along the Hudson in return for bringing to 
the country a certain number of settlers. These settlers were not 
allowed to own their own farms, but were obliged to pay rent to the 
lords over them, as well as to render to them other payments and serv- 
ices. 



DUTCH, SWEDISH, DANISH, AND RUSSIAN AMERICA 63 







O bfl 






64 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



the Dutch 
settlers. 



New Netherland might have been expected to enjoy religious liberty, 

which was the finest fruit of the long struggle of Holland with Spain for 

„ ^ independence. As early as 1587, by declaring that they 

Rehgioushb- f, ,, , ,.„ .... . .° ,, /, 

ertyamong would respect the difference m religious opinions, would 

leave all churches to be free and would "compell no 
man's conscience," the Estates General, the national legis- 
lature of Holland, made that country one of the first of modern states 

to espouse the cause 
of religious tolera- 
tion. On this side of 
the Atlantic, how- 
ever, the despotic 
Governor Stuyve- 
sant sought to pro- 
hibit all religious 
services in his colony 
save those of his own 
Dutch Reformed 
Church. The cos- 
mopolitan gathering 
of colonists under 
him would not toler- 
ate such procedure, 
and they insisted 
upon and secured a 
fair degree of relig- 
ious toleration. 

It has been said 
of the Dutch that 
they were " in per- 
petual alliance with 
ready money, be it 
English, French, or Spanish"; in other words, that they went every- 

Tu ^ ^ u where seeking trade. As soon as the English and the 

Ihe Dutch '^ , . . , , 1 

in the West French established their rich and prosperous settlements 

^^*^^' in the West Indies, the ever-selling Dutch appeared in 

their midst to dispose of their wares. They took into their possession 

three small unoccupied islands on the edge of the Leeward Islands to 

serve as a center of their operations. Chief of these was St. Eustatius, 

a small island the one long street of which was filled with commodities 

from every quarter of the globe; and hither the neighboring Enghsh 

and French planters resorted for trade, in full confidence that they 




Peter Stuyvesant 



DUTCH, SWEDISH, DANISH, AND RUSSIAN AMERICA 65 

could devote their entire energies to the cultivation of sugar and 
tobacco and depend upon the Dutch to furnish them with needed 
supplies. 

The little power of Sweden secured a foothold in America in what 
is now the state of Delaware along the bay and river of that name. 
In face of the Spanish, French, English, and Dutch claims New 
to the same region, she founded there New Sweden in 1638, Sweden, 
sent over colonists, and established a few settlements; but in fifteen 
years New Sweden had succeeded in attaining a population of less 
than one thousand inhabitants. Because of the distinguished part 
played by the Swedes on the Protestant side of the Thirty Years' 
War in Germany, there was little disposition on the part of the English 
and the Dutch to disturb the Swedish-American settlements until after 
the conclusion of that war in 1648. 

In 1655, however, the Swedes were forced to yield their position, 
which they had held for seventeen years, to the superior power of the 
Dutch under Governor Stuyvestant, who coveted the D^^f.^ con- 
trading facilities of the Delaware. The Swedes were quest of New 
allowed to retain their farms and possessions, but sover- '*^®'*^"- 
eignty passed to the Dutch, whose American possessions on the 
mainland now embraced the present states of Delaware, New Jersey, 
New York, and the western part of Connecticut. The very existence 
of New Netherland, well situated in itself and sandwiched in between 
the English on the north and on the south, was a menace to the English 
colonies, a challenge which it did not take England long to accept. 

Not to be left out in the game of slicing up the new world, Denmark, 
then in union with Norway, took into her possession the uninhabited 
island of St. Thomas, the westernmost of the Leeward Danish 
Islands, only a few miles from Porto Rico. The island was America. 
small and its soil not very fertile, but it possessed an excellent harbor, 
in which fifty ships could easily ride at anchor. Later the Danes 
acquired the near-by islands of St. John and Santa Cruz, and to- 
day they still hold the three islands. Greenland, discovered by Leif 
Ericson as early as 1000 a.d., was at first a free country, then a 
province of Norway till 1814, since which time it has belonged to 
Denmark. 

By the discoveries of Vitus Bering in the eighteenth century, Rus- 
sia also came into possession of a vast holding in America, — Alaska, — 
but so worthless did this northern province seem during Russian 
the time when the nations were disputing one another's America, 
claims in the new world, that she had no difficulty in defending her 
possession. 



66 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

FiSKE, Dutch and Quaker Colonies; Channing, United States, I; Osgood, Colonies 
in the Seventeenth Century; E. B. O'Callaghan, New Netherland; J. T. Scharf, Dela- 
ware; Amandus Johnson, Swedish Settlements. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

.1. New Netherland. Old South Leaflets, III, 69, IV, 94, and VII, 168; Epochs, II, 
101-114; Contemporaries, I, 529-536; Original Narratives — New Netherland; Winsor, 
America, IV, 395-442; J. H. Innis, New Amsterdam; E. Singleton, Dutch New York; 
S. Van Rensselaer, New York in the Seventeenth Century; Avery, United States, II, 
80-93, and 218-255; Source Book, 42-44, and 85-88. 

2. Peter Stuyvesant. Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, I, 198-201, and 292- 
294. 

3. The Patroon System. Fiske, Diitch and Quaker Colonics, I, 134-140. 

4. New Sweden. Avery, United States, II, 255-267. 

5. The Voyages of Henry Hudson. Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, I, 
80-95. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

Irving, Knickerbocker's History of New York; Stedman, Peter Stuyvesant' s Call. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

What explorers visited the Hudson River before Henry Hudson? Describe early 
Dutch houses, dress, and customs. Explain the slow growth of New Netherland. 



CHAPTER VI 

ENGLISH AMERICA. INFLUENCE OF THE UPRISING OF 
THE ENGLISH PURITANS, 1642-1660 

The "thorough" policy of King Charles of England and his minis- 
ters Wentworth ^nd Laud, which had been the means of sending thou- 
sands of their Puritan opponents to New England, finally -j-j^g pm-itan 
threw England herself into civil war. Parliament met Revolution 
in 1640 for the first time in eleven years and soon got "^ ngan . 
beyond the King's control. It brought about the arrest of Wentworth 
and Laud, released their many Puritan victims from prison, and put 
an end to the King's despotism, notably to his unlawful use of the 
taxing power. Despite this warning the King proved even more 
obstinate and arbitrary than in 1629, and hastened the gathering storm 
by entering the House of Commons in person and attempting the 
arrest of live of the members. He failed in his purpose, and his act 
served but to increase the bitterness against him. A struggle between 
the King and Parliament followed, and battles were fought between 
the Royalists or Cavaliers on the one side and the Parliamentarians 
or Roundheads on the other, which resulted in 1645 in a victory for 
the latter. A second civil war ending in the same way. Parliament 
instituted proceedings against the King, and in January 1649 he was 
condemned to death for his "tyrannical and arbitrary government." 

The extreme radicals then proclaimed a republic or commonwealth; 

and under the only written constitution that England The Puritan 

has ever had, Cromwell, the hero of the war, was made Common- 

r IT -ry • T ■ wealth under 

protector for life, a Kmg m all but name. His rule was Oliver 

vigorous and on the whole successful. Cromwrell. 

Under the new order of things in England, the character of the 
emigration to America completely changed. Not only did the Puri- 
tans, relieved from persecution, stop seeking wilderness _, 
, ,.,.,' r 1 • 1 1 The change 

homes across the Atlantic, but many of their brethren, in emigra- 

who had come to America under King Charles's arbitrary *J°^ *? 

o -^ Amenca. 

rule, returned to the mother country to take up the 
struggle against the royal power. Sir Harry Vane, governor of Massa- 
chusetts in 1636, fought under Cromwell as one of his chief lieutenants. 

67 



68 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

There was, on the other hand, an exodus of RoyaHsts to Virginia. 
During the continuation of the Puritan supremacy, the population of 
Virginia increased from 16,000 to 33,000. Among the newcomers were 
the ancestors of George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, 
and of many of the other families later prominent in Virginian history. 
Another iniluence in America of the uprising of the English Puritans 
was the check placed on the efforts of the King to destroy the liberties 
Preservation ^i New England. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, firm supporter 
of seif-goy- of Charles I, loyal member of the Church of England, 
Massachu- member of the Council for New England, and Proprietor 
setts. Qf Maine, had ambitions before the Civil War in Eng- 

land to become proprietor of all New England. Plymouth, Rhode 
Island, Connecticut, and New Haven had no charters; only that of 
Massachusetts needed to be overthrown. Under the proposed regime, 
if it had been established, the popular liberties of the New Englanders 
would have been endangered. With the support of the King and of 
Laud, it seemed at one time as if Gorges's ambition would be realized, 
but the gathering clouds of civil war diverted the royal attention to 
affairs at home, and the attack on the liberties of New England came 
to nothing. In this security of her charter as a result of the Puritan 
uprising in England, Massachusetts was more than compensated for 
the cessation of emigration to her shores. 

Puritan Virginia, Maryland, Bermuda, and Barbados, alone 

attacks on Qf ^}^g American colonies, were suspected of disloyalty 
loyal to the to the rule of Cromwell, and were forced to surrender, 
^^^^" though on fair and easy terms, to expeditions sent against 

them and to swear allegiance to the Commonwealth. 

GENER.\L REFERENCES 

Channing, United Stales, I; Osgood, Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, II, 54- 
71, and 105-142. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The English Capture of Jamaica. C. H. Haring, Buceaneers, 85-112. 

2. Sir Harry Vane. Osgood, American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, I, 
236-246. 

3. Sir Ferdinando Gorges. Osgood, Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, III, 
186-192, and 320-323. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Carefully explain the movement of population between England and America, 
1640-1660. What were the effects in America of the changes in the English Govern- 
ment, 1640-1660? Compare the influence of political conditions in England from 1620 
to 1640 on Puritan settlement in America, with the influence of political conditions 
from 1640 to 1660 on this movement. 



CHAPTER VII 

ENGLISH AMERICA UNDER THE LATER STUART KINGS, 

1660-1688 

FRICTION IN THE COLONIES 

The Puritan Republic in England did not long survive Cromwell's 
death in 1658, for in another year his incompetent son Richard, who 
had succeeded him, was forced to resign, and the experi- x^e resto- 
ment of the Commonwealth was at an end. In 1660, ration of the 
with the hearty approbation of the English people, the to the Eng- 
deposed Stuart line of kings was restored in the person ^^^^ throne, 
of Charles II, son of the beheaded Charles I. Just what was restored 
and what was not restored in England at this time is an interesting 
question. In general it may be said that the new King lacked many 
of the powers enjoyed by his father before 1640, and that Parliament 
retained the advantage which it had won. The Commonwealth was 
thoroughly discredited, and Cromwell's body was dug up from its 
grave in Westminster Abbey to be hanged in chains at Tyburn, where 
felons were executed. 

In America the first colony to feel the effects of the new order was 
the Puritan Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which had enjoyed a 
respite from the interference of the Stuart Kings for 
twenty years. In the exercise of their liberty the men pendent atti- 
of Massachusetts had grown careless of the mother *"*^^ °^ ^^^" 
country's authority. They failed to apprehend the regi- 
cides, Whalley and Gofife, who as judges had voted in 1649 ^or the 
execution of Charles I and were known to be hiding in the colony; 
they refused to tolerate the Church of England in their midst, and for 
a long time refused a member of this church the right to vote. They 
persistently broke the English laws of trade, and in 1661 issued a. 
Declaration of Rights against what they deemed to be the legislative 
encroachments of England. They even substituted for the English 
oath of allegiance a new oath of allegiance to Massachusetts alone. 

In resentment of this attitude the King in 1662 and 1663 granted 
liberal charters to Connecticut and Rhode Island respectivelv, that 

69 



70 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

he might foster formidable rivals to the Massachusetts colony. Con- 
necticut was enlarged to include the colony of New Haven and was 
The punish- extended on the west to the South Sea. Both Connecti- 
ment of Mas- cut and Rhode Island were constituted corporate colonies, 
sac use s. -yyith powers almost equal to those of independent repub- 
lics. War with Holland interrupted the King's design of adminis- 
tering further punishment to Massachusetts, but in 1676 he sent an 
investigator, Edward Randolph, to Boston, whose reports were de- 
cidedly unfavorable to the colony. In 1679 she was deprived of New 
Hampshire, which was made a separate royal colony, and in 1684 
her own charter was rescinded by an English court and she herself 
became a royal colony. 

Another influence of the English Restoration of 1660 was manifest 
in the increasing tyranny of Governor Berkeley in Virginia. Origi- 
nally appointed as Governor by Charles I in 1642, 
Virginia. temporarily deposed during the Commonwealth and 

^b^°ir'^ reappointed by Charles II, this sturdy Royalist ruled 

Virginia till 1677. His methods were arbitrary in the 
extreme. He kept the same House of Burgesses in office for fifteen 
years without reelection, and he gave assent to laws which it passed 
imposing heavy taxes. Because of his private interest in the fur 
trade he refused to call out the militia against the Indians, when the 
latter took the warpath in the remote western settlements. This was 
more than the settlers could endure. Their only recourse was to take 
up arms for their own protection without the sanction of the governor. 
This they did under the leadership of Nathaniel Bacon and saved 
their settlements from extinction at the hands of the savages. In the 
struggle that followed between the governor and the followers of Bacon, 
Jamestown was burned, Bacon died, and in the end the gov^ernor was 
triumphant. Referring to the severe cruelty with which Berkeley put 
down the rebellion, King Charles declared, "That old fool has taken 
away more lives in that naked country than I did here for the murder 
of my father." The lesson of the rebellion was that the frontiersmen 
of America loved liberty and fair play, and that when denied these 
by their rulers they would take measures to secure them for themselves. 

In many respects the Cavalier Englishmen of Virginia differed 
widely from the Puritan Englishmen of Massachusetts. A marked 
Education in difference was evident in the slight regard in which popular 
royalist education was held in the southern colony. As late as 

Virginia. ^^^^ Governor Berkeley wrote, "I thank God there are 

no free schools nor printing presses, and I hope we shall not have 
these hundred years; learning has brought disobedience and heresy 



ENGLISH AMERICA UNDER THE LATER STUARTS 71 

into the world and printing has divulged them and libels against the 
best government. God keeps us from both." 

NEW LAWS OF TRADE 

With the Restoration, new leaders and new commercial interests 
came to the front in England. The old religious and political ques- 
tions, which had caused so many to emigrate to America 
in the first part of the century, although not yet entirely merciai in- 
settled, were in part succeeded by new issues, chief ^restsm 
among which were matters of trade. In Cromwell's time 
an ordinance had been passed which attempted to reserve the colonial 
trade to England alone, but in spite of the law the Dutch ships did 
not cease their trade with the English colonies. Three new acts on 
the subject, known as Navigation Laws, were passed soon after 1660. 
According to these laws, the leading American products, such as 
tobacco, sugar, cotton, indigo, rice, and furs, known as "enumerated 
commodities," might be sold only in England, and must be carried to 
this restricted market in ships owned by English subjects and manned 
by crews, three-fourths of whom were English subjects. The Ameri- 
cans were allowed to make their purchases, with few exceptions, only in 
England. It was the violation of these laws that constituted Massa- 
chusetts' chief offense, reported Edward Randolph, when he investi- 
gated the conduct of that colony for King Charles II. 

In making the new trade regulations England acted upon the 
theory that the good of the colonies should be subordinate to the wel- 
fare of the mother country. It was the expectation that xhe under- 
under them more gold would flow into England in pay- 'yi^g prin- 
ment for commodities than would go out, and that new laws of 
thereby England would be enriched. The harsh and t^ade. 
inequitable working of these laws in the colonies, as time went on, 
ultimately called forth bitter resentment on the part of the Americans. 

CONQUEST OF THE RIVAL TRADING POSTS OF THE DUTCH 

In the enforcement of the laws of trade the English were obliged to be 
on the constant lookout against the Dutch smugglers. Planted down 
in the Valley of the Hudson, between New England and the 
southern colonies, the traders of New Netherland were in conquest of 
the very best of situations to assist the English colonists ^^J Nether- 
in evading the restrictions on their trade. Charles II 
determined on vigorous measures. Nine years after the Dutch had 
annexed the Swedes, an English fleet suddenly swooped down on New 



72 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

Amsterdam and annexed them all, Dutch and Swedes alike, to England, 
though Holland and England were nominally at peace. No resistance 
was offered and a majority of the settlers probably hailed with delight 
their deliverance from the tyranny of the Dutch trading company. 

New Netherland now became New York, a proprietary colony, 
under the King's brother, the Duke of York, as proprietor. By his 
New Nether- ^^^ edict the Duke made a code of laws for his colony 
land becomes known as the "Duke's Laws," and unwisely refrained 
for a long time from granting to his people a share in the 
government. Only in 1683 did he yield to the demand for a popular 
law-making body. Later, as James II, he repented of this action 
and ruthlessly deprived the legislature of the powers which he had 
bestowed. 

The Duke of York as proprietor regranted what is now New Jersey 
to two of his friends at court. Lord Berkeley and Sir George Carteret, 
„ , who in turn granted to the people under them a legisla- 

tive assembly and other privileges. Dissensions early dis- 
turbed the colony of New Jersey, and the two proprietors were glad to 
sell out their claims to a larger group of proprietors, prominent among 
whom was the great English Quaker, William Penn. It was while 
he was interested in New Jersey that Penn conceived of the "holy 
experiment" which was to result in Pennsylvania. Though New 
Jersey was soon largely settled by Quakers and under control of this 
peaceful sect, the colony had a history which was far from peaceful. 
Divided into East Jersey and West Jersey, it was harassed at times 
from one end to the other by quarrels over the respective rights of 
legislature, proprietor, and King. 

THE NEW COLONY OF CAROLINA AND OTHER TRADING 
ENTERPRISES 

The growing commercial spirit of England after 1660 lent itself to 
the founding of more colonies. Headed by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 
The founding afterwards the Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the leading 
of Carolina. friends of colonial America, eight courtiers of the King 
were constituted joint proprietors of the new trading colony of Caro- 
lina, south of Virginia. Before the grant was made, settlements had 
already been started by Virginians on Albemarle Sound in 1653, as 
military outposts against the Spaniards in Florida. After the grant 
was made and colonists had come from England, recruits arrived from 
New England and even from Barbados. A settlement was made in 
1670 in the southern part of the colony on the Ashley and Cooper 
Rivers, which despite some failures slowly developed into the town of 



ENGLISH AMERICA UNDER THE LATER STUARTS 75 

Charleston. Large numbers of Huguenots found a refuge in Carolina 
from persecutions in France, and Scotch Highlanders also sought the 
colony. 

At the outset a serious mistake was made in the form of government 
granted to the Carolina settlers by the proprietors. Flying in the face 
of the excellent example set by Lord Baltimore in Mary- An unwise 
land, who rendered his colony happy, prosperous, and constitution, 
attractive to settlers by granting to them a fair degree of self-govern- 
ment, the eight Carolina proprietors attempted to set up an unusual 
form of government after the manner of the feudal system of mediaeval 
Europe. The constitution for this was called the Grand Model, and 
was drawn up for them by the philosopher, John Locke. By this 
plan, the lords, whom the proprietors had the right to create under the 
name of landgraves and caziques, were to own the land and govern it 
arbitrarily, without the cooperation of the common people. The 
latter, known as leetmen, deprived of any share in the government, 
were at the bottom of the social scale, attached to the soil and under 
the jurisdiction of a lord of the manor above them. It was provided 
that "all the children of leetmen shall be leetmen, and so to all gener- 
ations." Instead of owning the land in their own name, the leetmen 
were to pay rent for it to their lords, and perform for the latter many 
menial duties and pay objectionable fees. 

The plan would not work. Hardy pioneers, subduing the wilderness 
by the sweat of the brow, are not men to brook interference from 
despotic superiors; they come to love their own way of Reasons for 
doing things, and in democratic fashion to count them- ^^^ failure, 
selves the equal of any people on earth. Just as the Pilgrim Fathers 
at Plymouth, Roger Williams and his followers at Providence, 
Thomas Hooker and his band at Hartford, and John Davenport and 
his company at New Haven set up their own government in the wilder- 
ness without direction or authority from the King, and maintained 
.their right to govern themselves, so the frontiersmen of Carolina 
exhibited the same desire for freedom; and they, too, gained their end. 
The proprietors abandoned the Grand Model, and granted their colo- 
nists a share in the government. 

In 1729 the northern settlements around Albemarle Sound and those 
farther south around Charleston were separated into the The division 
two royal colonies of North Carolina and South Carolina. °^ *^ colony. 

In South Carolina a crop was found, which in that region was even 
more profitable than sugar and tobacco; this was rice, at first the native 
rice of the Indians and later a better variety introduced from Mada- 
gascar. Rice thrives best in low swamps and marshes, where malarial 



74 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

fever is extremely destructive to human life, and blacks were found 
Slavery in better fitted to combat this hardship than were the whites. 
South Thus rice, as the leading product of the region, fastened 

aro ma. negro slavery on the colony. The same conditions pre- 

vailed, though to a less degree, in the cultivation of indigo, the other 
leading product of South Carolina. Very soon the blacks outnumbered 
the whites; they were cheap, they could be worked hard as long as 
they lived, and when they died could easily be replaced by fresh im- 
portations from Africa. To South Carolina African slaves seemed 
an economic necessity. 

Cooper formed another company, which received a grant of the 
Bahama Islands as a proprietary colony. Settlement began in the 
The Bahama hope of making Carolina and the Bahamas joint centers 
Islands. Qf trade, but for a long time the Bahamas were little 

more than nests of pirates; progress was slow; and with a poor system 
of government, the colony was one of the most backward of the West 
Indies. 

Under the same commercial stimulus, the Hudson Bay Company 
was organized in 1670 as a competitor of the French for the rich fur 
The Hudson trade of the interior of the continent in the north. The 
Bay King granted to his cousin. Prince Rupert, and to certain 

ompany. other noblemen, "the sole trade and commerce of all 
those seas, creeks, and sounds lying within the entrance of Hudson's 
Straits, with all the lands, countries, territories upon the coasts and 
confines" of the same. The Company did not organize a colony, but 
set up trading stations and turned the territory into a vast preserve 
for fur-bearing animals. 

PENNSYLVANIA 

In the foundation of the Quaker refuge of Pennsylvania, which 
was the most successful of the colonies set up in the later Stuart period, 
The new commercial considerations were secondary to the desire 

sect of the of a small religious sect in England to escape oppression. 
Quakers. j^ ^j^^ early part of the reign of Charles II, Parliament 

passed a series of laws to govern the religious situation, designed 
especially to secure uniformity of worship. These laws were but mildly 
enforced against other dissenters, but against the Quakers their enforce- 
ment was severe. The members of this new sect, founded shortly after 
1640 by a young Englishman named George Fox, were thrown into 
prison by hundreds. They did not believe in an organized church, in 
bishops, church councils, an educated ministry, sermons and church 
music, but rather in the "inner light," which they believed came to all 



ENGLISH AMERICA UNDER THE LATER STUARTS 75 

men alike and rendered the ordinary church services superfluous. If 
the spirit spoke to all, all were equal; hence the members of the sect 
were ardent democrats, bitter opponents of the divine right of Kings. 
They would not take off their hats to persons in authority, lest by this 
act they might seem to recognize superiority in the one saluted, and 
their simple form of address, "thee" and "thou," was intended to 
indicate the same belief in the equality of all. They opposed war 
and taxes for its support. They were out of harmony, therefore, not 
only with established religion but with established civil government as 
well. The new religion took a strong hold on its followers, who be- 
came noted for the simplicity and the sweetness of their faith and for 
the enthusiasm and courage with which they endured persecution. 

Rhode Island and Maryland, with their religious toleration, opened 
their doors to the persecuted sect, and New Jersey likewise furnished 
them a refuge. Then by the generosity of the" young William 
English Quaker, William Penn, the colony of Penn- Penn. 
sylvania was staked out for them. The conversion of the rich and 
socially prominent Penn to Quakerism was an important event in the 
history of the new religion. He was persecuted like the rest of the 
sect, was expelled from Oxford University, and sent by his disgusted 
parents to the continent of Europe, that he might lose his serious pur- 
poses in the gaieties of life; but he stood firm. Charles II owed Penn's 
father £16,000 and after the latter's death he paid the debt to the 
son by a grant of forty thousand square miles of wilderness lands, which 
Penn was to rule as proprietor. Penn dedicated the new province of 
Pennsylvania, as the King called it, to religious liberty, and welcomed 
thither not only Quakers but men of every religious faith. He spent 
the larger part of his time in England, making but two visits to America, 
but as a colony planter there was no other colonial leader so great as 
he. His character enabled him to embrace an unpopular religion and 
at the same time retain the friendship of men of prominence who had 
no sympathy with his views. He arranged the government of Pennsyl- 
vania so that the people enjoyed large powers of self-government in 
their own legislature. The country was a poor man's paradise, a 
refuge for the oppressed of every nation. Land was fertile and cheap, 
wages high, the Indians friendly, and no portion of the English frontier 
on the mainland enjoyed a more rapid growth. In the first twenty 
years the new arrivals numbered over twenty thousand, principally 
Germans and Scotch-Irish, who were fleeing from religious and political 
persecution at home. The first settlement in Pennsylvania, Philadel- 
phia, "the city of brotherly love," founded in 1683, soon outstripped 
in population every other American town. 



76 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



Of all the colony builders on the mainland William Penn was the 
most successful in dealing with the Indians. His treaty with the 
g , J Delawares, made under an elm tree at a point now within 

treatment of Philadelphia itself, was not written out in words, nor was 
the Indians. ^^ ^^^^ taken when it was made; only mutual pledges 
of peace and friendship were exchanged to hold while the "creeks 
and rivers run, and while 
the sun, moon, and stars 
endure"; a treaty, it was 
said, "never sworn to and 
never broken." For 
many years a white man 
in Quaker garb was called 
by the Indians a "William 
Penn man" and was un- 
molested. 

Because of the inability 
of the heirs of Lord Balti- 
more and William Penn to 
agree on the boundary 
line between Maryland 
and Pennsylvania a long 
dispute arose which was 
settled, 1 764-1 767, when 

two British 

surveyors, 

Mason and 
Dixon, ran the present 
boundary line at 39° 44'. 
This was the Mason and 

Dixon line, later famous as the boundary between slavery and free- 
dom in the eastern part of the United States. 

That Pennsylvania might have an outlet of its own to the sea, the 
royal proprietor of New York ceded to William Penn the three lower 

counties on the Delaware River, which the Dutch had 

taken from the Swedes and the English from the Dutch. 
This little colony, known as Delaware, differed, like New York and 
New Jersey, from the other mainland English colonies in having been 
first settled by other than English people, and differed from all the 
other mainland colonies in passing under the control of two other pow- 
ers before it was made an English colony. Penn granted the Delaware 
region its own legislature, though he retained his rights as proprietor. 



The line of 
Mason and 
Dixon. 




William Penn 



Delaware. 



ENGLISH AMERICA UNDER THE LATER STUARTS 77 

Thus Penn was at the same time Proprietor of Pennsylvania and 
Delaware, and at one time had a share in New Jersey. 

THE DOMINION OF NEW ENGLAND 

The acquisition of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware from 
the Dutch, and the foundation of Carolina and Pennsylvania gave the 
English a continuous line of colonies from Maine to the union f th 
Carolinas. Opportunity had come for attempting an colonies 
ambitious plan, which was nothing more nor less than the ^"^™p*®°- 
cancellation of the charters of all the corporate and proprietary colonies 
and their union into a single grand colony of the royal type. Massa- 
chusetts, with Maine and also New Hampshire, served as the nucleus, 
and to these Plymouth and Rhode Island were first added, then Con- 
necticut, New York, and New Jersey. The united colonies were 
called the Dominion of New England; and in practice the plan went 
no further, though it was originally intended to add Pennsylvania, 
Maryland, Carolina, and the Bahamas. Inasmuch as Bermuda, 
Virginia, and the various islands of the West Indies were already royal 
provinces, the way would have been prepared for one vast royal 
colony, had the Dominion of New England succeeded. 

Edmund Andros, formerly governor of New York and New Jersey, 
arrived in Boston in 1686 as the first governor of the Dominion of 
New England, authorized to rule without the aid of the Nature of 
colonial legislatures and with none of the restrictions of *^® union, 
a charter. The boundaries of the separate colonies were wiped out. 
That the rule of absolutism might be safeguarded, it was necessary 
for the King to gain possession of the existing charters. That of Con- 
necticut was spirited away by zealous patriots from the very presence 
of the governor himself under cover of darkness, and hidden, so the 
story goes, in the hollow of a tree, afterwards known as the Charter 
Oak; and that of Rhode Island was also withheld from him. 

The rule of Andros was arbitrary in the extreme, j^^ ^^^^ ^f 
He made laws and imposed taxes without the consent Governor 
of the people, interfered with the decisions of the courts "^ ^'^^' 
and with land titles, and forcibly introduced the Church of England 
into Puritan Boston. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Channing. United States, II; Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies; Fisher, Penn- 
sylvania; I. Sharpless, Quaker Government in Pennsylvania; E. McCrady, South 
Carolina tinder the Proprietary Government, South Carolina under the Royal Govern- 
ment, and South Carolina as a Royal Province; R. H. Toppan, Edward Randolph; 
Andrews, Colonial Self-government. 



78 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. Bacon's Rebellion. Epochs, II, 164-173; Contemporaries, I, 242-246; Os- 
good, Colonics in the Seventeenth Century, III, 242-279; Avery, United Stales, III, 

28-45- 

2. The Quakers. Osgood, Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, I, 269-289; 
Contemporaries, I, 479-486; Source Book, 80-82; Fiske, Dutch aiui Quaker Colonies, 
II, 108-114. 

3. The English Conquest of New Netherland. Epochs, II, 153-164; Con- 
temporaries, I, 537-541; Original Narratives — New Netherland, 447-466; Winsor, 
America, III, 385-420. 

4. William Penn and Pennsylvania. Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, II, 
114-170, and 295-316; Old South Leaflets, IW, gs, and VII, 171; Epochs, II, 180-191; 
Contemporaries, II, 65-68, and 74-77; Original Narratives — Early Pennsylvania, etc.; 

I. Sharpless, Quaker Experiment; Source Book, 67-69. 

5. Early New Jersey. Source Book, 62-65; Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, 

II, 10-16; Original Narratives — Early Pennsylvania, West Jersey, etc. 

6. The Pirates. Contemporaries, II, 244-247; C. H. Haring, Buccaneers; S. C. 
Hughson, Carolina Pirates; J. Esquemeling, Buccaneers; R. D. Paine, Buried 
Treasure. 

7. The Dominion of New England. Osgood, Colonies in the Seventeenth Cen- 
tury, III, 378-414; Avery, United States, III, 125-154. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

Hawthorne (in Twice Told Tales), Edivard Randolph'' s Portrait, The Gentle Boy, 
and Gray Cliampion; Whittier, Pennsylvania Pilgrim; H. Butterworth, Wampum 
Belt; M. Johnston, Prisoners of Hope; M. W. Freeman, Heart's Highway. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

In what respects did English colonization after 1660 differ from that before 1660? 
Compare the experiences of the Quakers in the various colonies. What was com- 
mendable and what was not commendable in the scheme of the Dominion of New Eng- 
land? Criticize the Grand Model of the Carolina proprietors. Give reasons for the 
rapid progress of early Pennsylvania. Sum up the effects in America of the English 
Restoration of 1660. 



CHAPTER VIII 

ENGLISH AMERICA. INFLUENCE OF THE ENGLISH 
REVOLUTION OF 1688 

The two later Stuarts, Charles II and James II, failed to learn a 
lesson from the fate of their father, Charles I, and were guilty of the 
same "tyrannical and arbitrary government." In re- The arbi- 
ligious affairs James II favored an even more extreme ^^^^ "^^^ °^ 
course than had his father before the Puritan Revolution, Stuart Kings 
for while Charles I had merely wished to retain the "^ England. 
Established Church and to force the Non-conformists to accept it, 
James cherished the hope of leading his Protestant subjects back 
to the religion of the Pope. James did not entirely dispense with 
Parliament, but claimed and exercised the right to suspend its laws 
temporarily in some cases and in other cases to dispense with them 
entirely. In America, as we have seen, he took the radical step 
of depriving the people of their legislatures; his measures against 
the charters of the New England colonies had their counterpart 
across the water in the taking away by Charles II of the charters 
of many English towns. His subjects at home, too, found James II, 
like his father, extremely cruel in the administration of justice. 

Yielding at last to the wrath of his subjects, James in 1688 "with- 
drew himself out of the kingdom and thereby abdicated," thus escaping 
the dire fate of the tyrant of 1649. A refugee in France, The Bloodless 
under the protection and encouragement of the French Revolution, 
government he was safe from the vengeance of the English; but he 
was never able to recover his lost throne, and Parliament was left free 
to regulate the powers of the English kingship as it saw fit. This it 
proceeded to do. The new King and Queen, William and Mary, who 
ascended the throne in 1689 at the invitation of the English Parliament, 
reigned with greatly reduced powers, while at the expense of the Crown 
the powers of Parliament were increased. The rights of the people 
were formulated by Parliament in the Bill of Rights, which included 
the following provisions: i, laws should not be suspended by the 
monarch; 2, no taxation should be levied without the consent of the 
people assembled in Parliament; 3, the right of petition to the govern- 
ment was guaranteed to the people; 4, freedom of speech in Parlia- 
ment was guaranteed; 5, excessive fines were not to be imposed; and 6, 

79 



8o THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

Parliament should be assembled frequently. To this programme of 
popular rights the King and Queen were obliged to subscribe. The 
Stuart pretensions to royal supremacy over the will of the people as 
expressed in Parliament were at an end. 

The immediate effect in America of the "Bloodless Revolution" 
in England was the dissolution of the Dominion of New England into 
the various colonies of which it was originally composed, 
the Domin- Governor Andros was arrested in 1689 by the people of 
^n of New Boston and sent back to England a prisoner, and Massa- 
chusetts, with Plymouth added, shortly afterwards re- 
ceived a new charter as a royal colony. The right of the people of 
Massachusetts, however, to elect their own governor, which they had 
enjoyed up to 1684, when they lost their charter as a corporate colony, 
was not regained. New Hampshire again became a separate royal 
colony. Rhode Island and Connecticut resumed their former charters 
as separate colonies, and the large powers which they had enjoyed under 
them were restored. In New York the government was usurped by a 
German merchant, Jacob Leisler, who held the reins of power for two 
years and was then hanged as a traitor. The colony regained the 
legislative assembly which James II had taken away, and both New 
York and New Jersey became royal colonies. 

A second and far-reaching result of the "Glorious Revolution of 
1688" was the precipitation of a long conflict with France, which, in 
turn, led the English government to make important 
with France changes in its methods of colonial administration. Wil- 
foreseen— \12im of Orange, as a Protestant and as Stadtholder of 
Holland, had already waged a long conflict with the 
Roman Catholic King of France in behalf of the liberties of his native 
country, and after he ascended the throne of England, with the power 
of the English army and navy and national resources behind him, he 
naturally desired to continue the old struggle. The English people 
were not averse to such a programme, for they resented the French 
espousal of the cause of James II. With such an attitude on the part 
of both the monarch and his people, the change in England from the 
days of Charles II and James II, who allowed themselves to make 
secret and unpatriotic promises to the King of France in return for 
millions of French money with which to meet the ordinary expenses of 
their administration, was striking indeed. 

Not only in Europe, but also in America, the two rival powers were 

jealously watching one another. By 1689, when the new 

order of things was established in England, France had 

built up a long frontier in the interior of North America on the north 



INFLUENCE OF THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION OF 1688 8i 

and west of the English settlements on the seaboard, which was far 
more of a menace to the English colonial empire than the Dutch colony 
of New Netherland had ever been. 

In preparation for the impending conflict, which was destined to 
have important effects upon colonial affairs, the English began to set 
their American frontier in order. The Board of Trade changes in 
and Plantations was appointed in London to secure colonial ad- 
stricter enforcement of the navigation laws, to investigate '"^ '^^ "*°' 
conditions in the colonies, and to make recommendations as to the 
colonial policy of the government. Before the first shots were fired 
against the French and after the wars started, new plans were seriously 
considered in London for the union of the colonies into one grand 
division somewhat after the model of the Dominion of New England, 
but without the arbitrary features of that discredited scheme. Under 
the stress of military necessity a congress assembled in New York in 
1690 to make plans for common defense, although nothing definite was 
accomplished. 

As a third result of the Revolution of 1688, the supremacy of Par- 
liament rather than of the King raised a constitutional question for the 
Americans. Did they owe the same allegiance to Par- -pj^g ^^^ 
liament as they had to the Crown, by which their charters constitutional 
had been granted? If Parliament, with its increasing ^"^^ *°"' 
authority, had exercised its new powers in colonial affairs mildly, the 
ciuestion might never have become troublesome; but in time Parlia- 
ment chose to exercise its powers in a way very offensive to the 
colonists, and they responded, as we shall see, by throwing off the 
yoke entirely. 

Before the changes flowing from the English Revolution of 1688 
were fully developed, the last English colony was founded in Georgia 
in 1733. A charter was granted to a board of " trustees " or The founding 
proprietors, the leader of whom was James Oglethorpe, an °^ Georgia. 
English philanthropist. The colony was designed to be a refuge for 
the King's poverty-stricken subjects, for the unfortunate debtors in 
the English prisons, for the many Protestant refugees from the German 
states who were within his realm, and for the distressed in general. 
Georgia was in reality a colony in trust for the poor, a genuine interna- 
tional charity. The first settlement was made at Savannah. Hither 
came John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield, prominent Non- 
conformist English evangelists, who visited the American colonies in 
the interests of Christian missions, and here Whitfield founded an or- 
phan asylum. Aside from philanthropic considerations, the mother 
country was glad to have the new outpost on the southern boundary of 



82 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

her American frontier, to serve as an additional barrier against the 
Spaniards in Florida. With the poverty-stricken refugees, Georgia 
was not at first prosperous, but Germans from Salzburg and Scotch 
Highlanders early furnished a more desirable class of settlers. 

The " trustees " of Georgia at first followed in the steps of the pro- 
prietors of the Carolinas by denying self-government to their colo- 
The govern- ^ists, but they were soon forced to grant this right to 
ment of the people. In 1752 the King took Georgia into his own 

eorgia. hands and it became a royal colony. The proprietors of 

Maryland and Pennsylvania, who early granted self-government to 
their colonists, were the only proprietors on the mainland to retain 
their rights down to 1776. Oglethorpe lived to see the colony which 
he had founded, together with twelve other English colonies along 
the seaboard, throw off the yoke of the mother country in the War of 
Independence. 

From 1733 back to the first permanent English settlement in 1607 
there stretched a period of one hundred and twenty-five years, during 
R'sume of which the English people had set up over twenty colonies 
English coio- in America. Few migrations in the world's history equal 
mzation. ^j^j^ ^^^ ^^ interest, and none equal it in the immensity of 

the results accomplished. The line of the English colonies on the 
mainland extended from Maine to Florida. Denmark and Russia, as 
rival colonial powers, were negligible, Sweden and Holland had been 
eliminated, and Spain on the south was no longer formidable; only 
France on the north and west and beyond the Appalachians remained. 
A death struggle was impending, which would determine whether 
French or English civilization was to prevail on the continent of North 
America. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Channing, United States, II; Andrews, Colonial Period. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. Leisler's Rebellion. Contemporaries, I, 544-547; Osgood, Colonies in the 
Seventeenth Century, III, 444-476; Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, II, 183-208. 

2. The 0\t;rthrow of Andros in New England. Old South Leaflets, II, 3, 4; 
Osgood, Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, III, 415-443; Fiske, Dutch and Quaker 
Colonies, II, 176-179. 

3. Oglethorpe in Georgia. H. Bruce, General Oglethorpe. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

What were the effects in America of the English RevoUition of 1688? Give an 
account of Andros's career as colonial governor in America. 



CHAPTER IX 
FRENCH AMERICA 

The first Frenchmen to reach America were fishermen, who began 
to arrive off Newfoundland as early as 1504, but their French fish- 
huts along the coast could hardly be accounted settle- ing settle- 
ments and they gave France no hold on the country. ™^° ^' 

Permanent French settlements came slowly. Their first attempts 

to follow up the explorations of Verrazano and Cartier and secure a 

foothold on the mainland were failures. The site of Oue- _,. , ., 
, , . 1 1 ^ • • , The failure 

bee, discovered by Cartier m 1535, was not permanently of the first 

settled for seventy-three years, and during the long fhe^pr^nch^ 
interval, while the French were expending their energies at coioniza- 
at home in religious wars, they failed in every attempt *°°' 
they made at frontier settlement. The French Protestants, or Hugue- 
nots, fleeing from religious persecutions, first sought a refuge in far- 
off Brazil in 1555, but were slaughtered by the Portuguese, who were 
there before them. 

One Huguenot party, reaching the St. John's River in Florida in 
1562, made its way north to Port Royal in what is now South Carolina, 
and failed utterly in its attempt to establish a settlement. The French 
Another expedition of the Huguenots arrived on the St. ^^ Florida. 
John's River two years later, just before the terrible Spaniards 
under Menendez arrived on the same peninsula. There are few 
sadder tales of frontier struggle than this meeting of the representa- 
tives of the two Christian powers of Spain and France in Florida. 
Pedro Menendez, following in the wake of De Leon, Narvaez, and De 
Soto, arrived in Florida in 1565 with over one thousand followers and 
founded St. Augustine, the first permanent white settlement within 
the present boundaries of the United States. "The one hundred and 
forty-two Huguenots whom he found on the St. John's River, Menendez 
massacred in cold blood. Another detachment of two hundred, and 
still another of one hundred and fifty, he ambushed and murdered. 
Three years later the French took their revenge, when Dominique 
Gourges, at the head of a large force, arrived from France, fell upon 

83 



84 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



the Spaniards and put them all to the sword, except fifteen or twenty 
whom he hanged. As Menendez was said to have hanged some of his 
victims from the trees under the inscription, "Not as to Frenchmen, 
but as to Lutherans," so Gourges nailed over his last victims the 
words, "Not as to Spaniards, but as to liars and murderers." The 
French made no more attempts to appropriate this part of the country, 
and Florida remained in the hands of the Spaniards. 

At the close of their religious wars in 1598, the French again turned 
their attention to Canada, this time under the patronage of one of their 
greatest kings, Henry IV. "In 1603 the King granted to 
settlement of Sieur de Monts permission to colonize the habitable Ameri- 
French ^.^j^ shores north of the latitude of Philadelphia, and in 

1605 one of De Monts' companions established the first 
permanent French settlement on the continent at Port Royal in 

Nova Scotia. The greatest of 
French explorers and frontier 
builders, Samuel de Champlain, 
founded Quebec in 1608 and 
Montreal in 161 1. As lieutenant- 
governor of New France, 1608- 
1635, Champlain was ruling in 
the north when the English Pil- 
grims arrived at Plymouth, the 
Puritans in Boston, and the 
Dutch on the Hudson. 

The history of New France 
was far different from that of 
the English frontier to the south. 
There were no separate colonies 
in New France with independent 
administration, and no popular law-making assemblies. The whole 
The pater- ^^ ^^^ French territory was united in one colony under 
the unrestricted power of the French King. Under him, 
as "the true father and savior of Canada," who exer- 
cised "every care" regarding it, the governor assumed the reins of 
administration, assisted by other officials of royal appointment. 

The whole system was feudal, similar to that in New Netherland 
and to that attempted in Carolina. The common man could not own 
The common J^^id, but for the privilege of occupying it must pay rent 
people bound to his lord or seigneur, grind his corn at his lord's mill, 
°^"' bake his bread at his lord's oven, and pay fees for the 

privilege. He must do manual labor, too, for his lord during a certain 




Samuel de Champlain 



nalism of 
French rxile, 



FRENCH AMERICA 85 

number of days in the year, and perform his part in the making and 
mending of the roads and bridges in the community. 

Only Frenchmen and Roman Catholics were acceptable as set- 
tlers. The King took it upon himself to pay the traveling expenses of 
immigrants to his colony. When there were fewer Sparse 
women than men in the settlements, he sent out young population, 
women to be the settlers' wives, and as a wedding gift presented to 
each couple "an ox, a cow, a 

pair of swine, a pair of fowls, ' " "'i "f^ '^■^^^^ 

two barrels of salted meat, and _ _._---=- lyj^'^fes^ 

eleven crowns in money." _ ^ ^ /K ^^^ j|jj> | '^--~ _ 
After fifty years of effort Que- ^^,/^^^JjJi|8!iP%^^^ 
bee numbered but six hundred i^ ' ' ^' ^TTTTT ^^^^^rr^'^^^^^'' 
people, and the whole of Canada ^^^^^^^^^^^ LJ ' ^L— -^^^^T 
in 1 688 only eleven thousand. "^^^.^^^^1 '^^^^■^^^^^-i/^^S^-^'-^ 

Though they never succeeded --^^^^^ -.^^^^^^^^"t-^^sr 
in reconciling to themselves the ^^ ^^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^ q^^^^^_ ^^^s 

Iroquois, whom Champlain had 

estranged in 1609, the French by unusual kindness gained the friend- 
ship of most of the Indians with whom they came in con- Relations 
tact and converted them to Christianity in large numbers, with the 
They lived with them, took on their manners and cus- 
toms, intermarried with them, and in general brought themselves 
down to the Indian level. The English, who held themselves more 
aloof, were never so successful in winning the Indian heart. 

Priests and lay missionaries accompanied the settlers to labor for 
the spread of Christianity among the natives, and Quebec, the capital 
of the country, was filled with churches and religious The Jesuits 
houses. To these, as to places of refuge, many a lady of ^ America. 
France fled for religious solitude. The very rivers, bays, and capes 
received religious names. New France represented the best spirit of 
the Roman Catholic Church. From 161 1 to 1800 three hundred and 
twenty Frenchmen, members of the Society of Jesus, Jesuits as they 
were called, labored as missionaries in the wilds of America. This 
remarkable Roman Catholic order, which originated in Europe in 1534 
with seven members, numbered thousands by the time of the French 
migrations to America. Its missionaries were scattered in China, 
Japan, Brazil, and Paraguay, and soon they reached the interior of 
North America, where they rendered important services in exploration 
as well as in Christianizing the natives. Finer devotion to Christian 
ideals was never exhibited, greater dangers and sufferings in the name 
of religion never encountered. The Jesuits traveled in birch-bark 



86 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

canoes; their food was the dried corn of the natives and smoked buflfalo 
meat; and their home was the entire interior of the continent. They 
faced torture, hardship, and death, and almost every one of them died 
in active service. 

In the wonderful twenty years of colony building from 1620 to 
1640 the French as well as the English sent out scores of vessels to the 
The French islands of the West Indies. It was said that they arrived 
West Indies, ^t St. Christopher or St. Kitts on the very day of the 
arrival of the English there in 1625; at any rate, both nations were 
early established in the island. By 1660 the French had succeeded 
in occupying thirteen small islands, including Guadaloupe, Martinique, 
Tortuga, and a part of the large island of Santo Domingo or Haiti, 
which they wrested from the Spaniards. By 1685 the total population 
of the French islands was twenty-seven thousand, including whites 
and blacks, which was more than twice as many as in the whole of 
Canada. The progress of Santo Domingo in the eighteenth century 
was so great that in 1771 its population reached 245,000 (220,000 
slaves). Among the colonies of the English only Massachusetts, 
Pennsylvania, and Virginia were more populous. 

The first attempt of the French to settle around the mouth of the 
Mississippi, in the country which they called Louisiana, was made after 
The French La Salle reached the Gulf of Mexico by his famous voyage 
at the mouth down that river in 1 68 2. There came hither, first, the colo- 
sissippi nizing expedition led by La Salle himself, which ended 

River. i^ shipwreck and disaster; second, an expedition under 

Iberville and Bienville in 1699, which effected, at the mouth of the 
Mississippi, a settlement later moved to the present site of Mobile; 
and third, an expedition which founded New Orleans in 17 18; all to 
the great displeasure of the Spanish in Florida, who proceeded to 
establish Pensacola as a menace to the intruders. Louisiana, harassed 
by war and poverty, grew slowly. 

Possessed of settlements on the St. Lawrence and on the Mis- 
sissippi, which constituted entering wedges of a great inland and 
possibly continental empire, the part of the French was 
bilities^of obviously to fill in the intervening country along the 

future devel- magnificent waterways that beckoned them on from the 
opmcnt. o -' 

north and from the south, and to crowd the English on 

their east to the Atlantic. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Parkman, Pioneers of France, Frontenac, and Old Regime; Winsor, Cartier la 
Fronlenac; Thwaites, France in America. 



FRENCH AMERICA 87 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Jesuits in America. Parkman, Jesuits; Winsor, America, IV, 263-294; 
Contemporaries, I, 129-132. 

2. Champlain as Discoverer and Colony Builder. Winsor, America, IV, 
103-129; G. Parker and C. G. Bryan, Old Quebec, 19-43. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

K. MuNROE, Flamingo Feather; Catherwood, Lady of Fort St. John, and Story 
oj Tonty. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

What are the effects of paternaHsm, such as that practiced by France in Canada? 
What were the effects of the soil and climate of Canada on French colonization? In 
what English colonies were the French Huguenots prominent? What two important 
Canadian cities did Champlain found? Describe the beginning of each. Compare 
events in New France with contemporary events in the English colonies. 



CHAPTER X 
BRITISH AND FRENCH AMERICA 

PRELIMINARY STRUGGLES 

To the English settlers along the shores of the Atlantic, the French 
in Nova Scotia, in the Valley of the St. Lawrence, and beyond the 
Early Appalachians were interlopers on English domain. Pre- 

attacks. liminary struggles between the two powers began in the 

early days of settlement. In 1613 an expedition from Jamestown 
wiped out a French settlement on the Maine coast at Mount Desert 
Island; and a few years later, while England and France were at war 
in Europe, another English expedition forced Champlain to lower the 
standard of France at Quebec, only to see their defeated rival restored 
by the treaty of peace of 1632. From time to time other skirmishes 
took place between the outposts of New France and New England. 
Wars were carried on between the two powers for the possession of 
the West Indies, where almost every island changed hands once and 
some many times, and for the possession of the Indian fur trade on 
the shores of Hudson Bay. Hostility to France became a ruling 
passion in England after William of Orange ascended the throne in 
1689, and the second "Hundred Years' War" between the two 
nations, which was to last with brief intervals of peace till 181 5, 
opened at once. 

King William's War, 1689-1697, Queen Anne's War, 1702-1713, 
and King George's War, 1 744-1 748, each so called from the name of the 
King "WU- English monarch reigning at the time, were the American 
cT^'n^^^' phases of contemporary English-French struggles in 
Anne's War, Europe, arising respectively out of the disputes over the 
Geor^^s ^.id of the French to James II, over the succession to the 

War. Spanish throne, and over the succession to the throne 

of Austria. 

In the course of Queen Anne's War the Act of Union was passed by 
^ . jj J the EngHsh Parliament in 1707, uniting Scotland and 

England and England into one kingdom, with one King and one Par- 
Scotiand. liament, so that from that date the government of the 

mother country should be spoken of as British rather than as English. 

Foreseeing the inevitable clash, the English in 1684 had taken the 

88 



BRITISH AND FRENCH AMERICA 



89 



precaution of cementing their union with the Iroquois Indians by a 
formal alliance, which made the Irocjuois British sub- ^^^ ^^^.^ ^^ 
jects and their territory British territory. The French, the Indians 
on their part, in return for the assistance which Champlain ^ ^^'^^' 

had given to the Algonquins in the historic fight of the latter with the 
Iroquois in 1609, 
demanded and se- 
cured the aid of 
these against the 
British; and this 
aid they used most 
ruthlessly, as 
Indian massacre 
after Indian mas- 
sacre of the Eng- 
lish colonists along 
the lone frontier 
abundantly testi- 
fies. In the mid- 
dle of the winter 
of 1690, during 
King William's 
War, the village of 
Schenectady, New 
York, was the 
scene of a massa- 
cre of sixty of its 
inhabitants at the 
hands of the 
French and 
Indians, who had 
come all the way from Canada on their murderous mission. They fell 
upon their victims in the night, and before morning every house was in 
ashes; only a few survivors escaped in the darkness over the paths of 
snow to Albany. A similar fate befell Portland and York in Maine, 
Salmon Falls and Durham in New Hampshire, and Groton, Deerfield, 
and Haverhill in Massachusetts. The latter town suffered on two 
different occasions. 

By the treaty which closed King William's War in 1697, there 
were no exchanges of territory, but by that of Utrecht in Exchanges of 
1713, at the close of Queen Anne's War, although France te"itory. 
succeeded in maintaining her hold on Canada, she was obliged to give 




North .\merica in 1713 



90 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

up to the British the two provinces of Acadia and Newfoundland, which 
guarded the entrance to Canada on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and to 
recognize the British claims to the Hudson Bay country in the interior. 
Disagreement arose over the limits of Acadia almost immediately after 
the signing of the treaty. The British claimed that Acadia included 
Cape Breton Island, all of what is now Nova Scotia, all of what is 
now New Brunswick, and all of Maine as far as the Kennebec, while 
the French insisted that Acadia was confined to the present limits of 
Nova Scotia. France proceeded to enforce her claims by the erection 
of a fortress at Louisburg on Cape Breton Island, at the southern en- 
trance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence. There were two miles of stone 
masonry and four hundred cannon in the fort. Manifestly France 
was determined to stand guard over this entrance to her Canadian 
dominions. 

This formidable fortress was taken during King George's War by 
the New England militia under Colonel Pepperrell of Maine, acting in 
The fate of conjunction with a strong British fleet, taken, however, 
Louisburg. Qjjjy ^Q i^g given back in the treaty of peace in 1748, when 
the British judged the concession to be necessary in order to recover 
certain posts which had been captured from them by the French in 
India. The New Englanders never quite forgave the mother country 
for the slight. 

THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR 

The various conflicts between the French and the British down to 
1750 were, so far as America was concerned, mere border warfare, in 
The struggle which little was accomplished toward deciding the mastery 
for the in- of the continent. The decisive blows were struck in the 
yond the Ap- Seven Years' War or the French and Indian War, 1756- 
paiachians. 1763. Whereas the former wars were mainly reflections of 
European differences, this final conflict arose primarily out of British 
colonial affairs in India and America, and was waged on a world-wide 
scale up to that time unknown. As a result of a new wave of immigra- 
tion, which had set in about 1718, the British had laid down a new or 
second frontier in America several hundred miles from the coast in the 
"back country" of the Shenandoah Valley, stretching southward from 
Pennsylvania. By the middle of the eighteenth century hundreds of 
thousands of settlers were in this.newer West. Thus the British of the 
seaboard came to have a frontier of their own, and some were be- 
ginning to think of planting still a third frontier beyond the mountains 
in what is now Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Advance surveying 
parties reached these farthest regions in 1750. Unlike their brethren 



BRITISH AND FRENCH AMERICA 91 

in the islands of the West Indies, the colonists on the mainland had 
plenty of room on the west in which to expand, could they but gain 
a firm hold on that territory. 

The French in Canada, on the Mississippi, and on the Gulf of Mexico, 
laid claim to the same rich territory in the interior of the continent, 
particularly to the Ohio Valley, which was the immediate 
bone of contention. One French party, which passed pansion into 
down the Ohio in 1749, nailing up signboards and burying J^® ?^^^ 
lead plates to proclaim the land as belonging to the King of 
France, was only one year ahead of the English surveyors. Further 
to enforce their claims, in defiance of the warning of the governor of 
Virginia delivered to them by his representative, young George Wash- 
ington, the French in 1753 erected a new line of three forts south from 
Lake Erie in western Pennsylvania; and the next year, after first 
driving away the British, whom they found at the head of the Ohio 
River, already at that time recognized as the "gateway to the West," 
they erected there Fort Duquesne. Upon the arrival of British militia 
from Virginia, a skirmish took place between the rival forces, in which 
George Washington is said to have ordered the first shot fired; and later 
in the same year of 1754, at a stockade called Fort Necessity, Washing- 
ton was compelled to surrender the post though not his men. The 
Seven Years' War had begun, although as yet no formal declaration 
of hostilities had been made. 

In 1754, at the call of the King, who was keenly alive to the dif- 
ficulties of waging the contest with the French while his frontier 
remained divided into a number of separate colonial gov- 
ernments, the British colonies on the mainland sent dele- the British to 
gates to Albany, New York, to devise if possible some plan umte their 
of union in face of the common danger. The object was to 
repeat under different circumstances and on a larger scale, but from 
the same motives of military necessity, 
the union effected by four of the New 
England colonies in the seventeenth cen- 
tury. The scheme agreed upon in the 
congress was known as the Albany Plan of 
Union and was proposed by Benjamin 
Franklin. It provided, first, for an annual 
council, to be composed of delegates from Franklin's Device to encour- 
all the colonies, with power to pass laws t""^ U,^^°^' /''^^^ ''^''° "^ ^™ 

. ' ^ 1 . , Pennsylvania Gazelle 

on such important matters as colonial 

taxation, public lands, and Indian and military affairs; and, second, 

for a president general, to be appointed by the King, and to possess the 




92 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



power to veto the acts of the council and to appoint important colonial 
ofl5cials. The mutual jealousies of the colonies, however, would not 
tolerate the surrender of such great powers to a new central govern- 
ment, and the plan was rejected. 

The next year, 1755, in military preparation for the coming struggle, 
the British took two important steps. In an attempt to make sure 
Braddock's of their hold on the disputed territory in the West, they 
defeat. returned to the vicinity of Fort Duquesne with two regi- 

ments of regulars from Great Britain and a body of Virginia militia. 

General Braddock was in 
command, and George 
Washington was in the 
little army in what was 
now his fourth trip over 
the mountains to the 
west. Never had such a 
fine military display been 
seen in America; but 
Braddock underesti- 
mated the prowess of his 
French and Indian oppo- 
nents, and when Wash- 
ington advised him to 
instruct his men to fight 
after the manner of the 
Indians, each man for 
himself, from behind 
rocks and trees, he 
spurned the counsel. He 
paid dearly for the re- 
fusal, and that speedily, 
when, at his command, 
most of the regulars 
fought in close European formation, in which seven hundred of them 
were slain, including Braddock himself and a large proportion of his 
officers. Only Washington's resourcefulness averted the total destruc- 
tion of the British. The loss of the French and the Indians reached 
barely half a hundred. 

At the same time the British were endeavoring to secure their hold 
on the strategic country of Nova Scotia or Acadia, where the French 
inhabitants, almost a half a century after their conquest, still refused 
to recognize the British as their rulers. A band of soldiers was des- 




BeNJAMIN Fr.'VNKLIN 



BRITISH AND FRENCH AMERICA 93 

patched to enforce the order that the Nova Scotians take the oath of 

allegiance or leave the country. Overwhelming military 

force had no terrors for the simple Acadians, who to the tation of the 

number of almost seven thousand submitted to deporta- f*"® j?^ ^^°™- 

r '• /-. Acadia, 

tion rather than swear themselves subjects of Knig George, 

and they were scattered throughout the British possessions from 

Maine to the far south. 

Geographically the British frontier on the mainland had a decided 

advantage in the coming struggle, in its compact and unbroken line 

of settlements which had not yet dissipated their strength 

, .' , 1 1 A 11- A view or the 

to any great extent by expansion beyond the Appalachians belligerents. 

into the interior. The scattered population of the French, Geographical 
on the other hand, stretched all the way from Canada to 
Louisiana. Moreover, the St. Lawrence River in the north, frozen 
over during a large part of the year, and the Mississippi, with its hidden 
sand bars, rendered access to the interior of the French possessions dif- 
ficult. In the West Indies geographical advantages were about even. 

In total population on the mainland and in the islands the advantage 
was overwhelmingly with the British, whose 2,000,000 in- p , ^ 
habitants outnumbered the French by at least fifteen to one. 

The British colonists, devoted to political discussion, trial by jury, 
freedom of the press, and popular lawmaking, possessed a self-reliance 
utterly foreign to the dependent French subjects under self-govem- 
an absolute monarchy, who knew nothing of Anglo-Saxon ment versus 
liberty; but the uniformity of plan and counsel of the P^^^^'^m. 
French, under one supreme command, had advantages over the mutual 
dissensions and bickerings of their rivals. 

After the war had formally begun in 1756, the fighting at first 
centered at the outposts lying between the French and the British settle- 
ments, possession of which would give either party oppor- 
tunity to invade the territory of the other. In the critical important 
year of 1758 the first strategic point was taken by the events of the 
British, when for a second time they captured the fortress 
of Louisburg on Cape Breton Island. This victory enabled them the 
better to send an expedition up the St. Lawrence against Quebec, 
while at the same time it deprived the French of a base of operations 
from which to send an expedition by sea against Boston or New York. 
The next month, by the capture of Fort Frontenac on Lake Ontario, 
where the lake empties into the St. Lawrence, the British gained 
possession of that inland water route approaching Quebec on the west, 
and before the end of the year they won possession of the "gateway to 
the west" by the capture of Fort Duquesne. Here the cluster of 



94 



THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 



cabins was named Pittsburg in honor of the British Secretary of State, 
William Pitt. 

"We are forced to ask every morning what new victory there is, for 
fear of missing one," wrote Horace Walpole in England at the time. A 
William tide of victory had set in for the British that was destined 

P^"- to sweep on to the utter routing of the French; and the 

minister at the head of affairs, who was responsible for the success, 
was William Pitt. Frederick the Great of Prussia said of him: "Eng- 
land has at last brought forth a man." Pitt was arrogant and con- 




QUEBEC 

ceited, but he proved to be the man of the hour for his country, a 
patriotic, honest, and creative statesman, possessed of wonderful judg- 
ment and ability to inspire energy and enthusiasm in the nation. 
By a treaty which he made, the British paid to the Prussians almost 
three and a half million dollars, in order, as Pitt said, to defeat France 
in Germany. Pitt also was behind Robert Clive, the young British 
general who was winning India from the French. 

In 1759 the British got a firmer hold on the inland water route west 
of Quebec by the capture of Niagara, and later in the same year they 
More British Secured the approaches to Quebec from the south by 
victories. ^}^g reduction of Forts Ticonderoga and Crown Point on 

Lake Champlain. 



BRITISH AND FRENCH AMERICA 



95 



The siege of Quebec itself lasted three months. Situated at the top 
of a cliff two hundred feet above the water, at the juncture of the 
St. Charles River with the St. Lawrence, the stronghold ^^^ capture 
seemed impregnable, but it was taken at last by the of Quebec, 
strategy of the young British commander, General Wolfe. 
By a clever move the British scaled the heights in the dead of night 
and in the early 
morning drew up 
on the Plains of 
Abraham, above 
the city, to the ut- 
ter surprise of the 
French garrison. 
In the fighting 
which ensued both 
Wolfe and the 
defending com- 
mander, Mont- 
calm, were killed. 
When informed 
that the enemy 
were in flight, the 
wounded Wolfe 
gave an order and 
turned upon his 
side, murmuring, 
"Now, God be 
praised, I shall 
die in peace!" 
The defeated 
Montcalm said to 
the surgeon, who 

informed him that his wound was mortal, " So much the better, I 
shall not live to see Quebec surrendered." 

France lost every one of her West Indian possessions in the course 
of the war, and Spain, which had joined France because of complications 
of the war in Europe, lost Havana in Cuba to a force of ^j^^ British 
two thousand British militia from the mainland. Only victory com- 
illness among the British troops prevented them from ^ ® ®" 
passing on to essay the conquest of the French on the Mississippi, 
In the Far East Great Britain captured the Spanish Philippine Islands 
and the French possessions in India. 




North America in 1763 



96 THE EUROPEAN COLONIES 

By the terms of the treaty of Paris in 1763, which ended the war, the 
British brought their empire in America to its largest extent. They 
The treaty of gained the disputed territory between the Appalachians 
Paris, 1763. g^j^^j ^j^g Mississippi, where the claims of the French ceased 
forever, and the whole of Canada, with the exception of two small 
islands off the fishing banks of Newfoundland, which the French 
had held since the peace of Utrecht and were now allowed to con- 
tinue to hold but never to fortify. In the West Indies, where the 
conquests of the British were complete, the French were allowed to 
regain the three important sugar islands of Guadaloupe, Martinique, 
and St. Lucia, probably because the jealous sugar planters of the British 
islands were opposed to admitting their old rivals into the advantages 
of the British colonial system. There were those who urged that 
Canada be given back to the French, on the ground that in hostile 
French hands that province would serve to render the seaboard colonies 
of the British farther south more loyal to the mother country, in pro- 
portion as it rendered the protection of the British army and navy 
more necessary. Even at this time it would seem that the loyalty of 
some of the British colonies was suspected. The statesmen of Great 
Britain were swayed by the dream of a mighty colonial empire and they 
decided to keep Canada, relying on their ability to hold the colonies 
farther south by other means. By a treaty between Spain and Great 
Britain, the former power was allowed to recover Cuba and the 
Philippines, but was deprived of Florida, which went to Great Britain, 
while Spain received from France, in still a third treaty, the claims 
of the latter power to the interior of North America west of the 
Mississippi, including New Orleans. French influence with the nations 
of India was lost to the British. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Channing, United States, II; Parkman, Half Century of Conflict, Montcalm 
and Wolfe, and Conspiracy of Pontiac; Fiske, New France and New Eiiglam; E. B. 
Greene, Provincial America; Sparks, Expansion, 69-77. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. Indian Massacres. Source Book, 98-100; C. H. Lincoln, Iiidian Wars, 1675- 
1699. 

2. Braddock's Defeat. Epochs, III, 39-51; Contemporaries, II, 365-367; 
Source Book, 103-105; Hulbert, Historic Highways, IV, 15-135; Avery, United 
States, IV, 60-79. 

3. The Deportation of the Acadians. Epochs, III, 51-58; Contemporaries, 
II, 360-365; Avery, United States, IV, 93-112. 

4. The Capture of Quebec. Old South Leaflets, III, 73, and VII, 4; Epochs, III, 
58-66; Contemporaries, II, 369-372; Source Book, 105-107; Avery, United States, IV, 
273-295; G. Parker and C. G. Bryan, Old Quebec, 268-298. 



BRITISH AND FRENCH AMERICA 97 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

Longfellow, Evangeline; Whittier, Pentiickcl; G. Parker, Seals of the Mighty; 
Hawthorne, Grandfather's Chair, Part II; K. Munroe, At War with Pontiac; 
Cooper, Last of the Mohicans. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

In what sense was the British defeat of the French a critical event in the history 
of North America? Compare the Albany plan of union with the previous plans of 
colonial union. What was the influence of the British-French wars on the American 
Revolution? What was the strategic importance of the forts at Louisburg and at Fort 
Duquesne? Why did the British deport the Acadians? Did the French or the British 
have the better claim to the Ohio Valley? On what did the Spaniards, the English, 
the French, and the Dutch, base their respective claims to North America? State the 
possessions of the different nations in America after 1763. Describe the political 
organization and government of New France, and show wherein New France re- 
sembled, and wherein it differed politically from, the British colonies. 



PART III 
THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

CHAPTER XI 
BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 

POPULATION AND IMMIGRATION 

Although in 1763 there were, roughly speaking, three different 
lines of British settlements stretching parallel to the Atlantic Coast, 
the sparse- ^^^ ^^ different stages of development; first, that on the 
ness of popu- seaboard, second, that in the Shenandoah Valley, and 
lation. third, that of which barely a beginning had been made 

west of the Appalachians; not one of these was clearly beyond the 
frontier stage. Even the seaboard colonies were far removed from 
settled conditions and far behind the mother country in material 
progress. Population was sparse. The only towns having 10,000 
inhabitants or over were Philadelphia with 18,000, and New York and 
Boston with 15,000 each; Charleston, South Carolina, the next largest, 
numbered 9000. With few roads and bridges, communication be- 
tween the various sections was difficult. People staid at home per- 
force. Upset vehicles, stage coaches and horses stuck in the mud, 
overturned ferry boats, and uncomfortable inns on the way were 
generally sufficient obstacles to all but the most necessary travel. 

The most populous colonies were Virginia with 345,000 people, 
Massachusetts with 235,000, Pennsylvania with 220,000, and Jamaica 
Total with 184,000. From 1700, when the number of inhabit- 

population. _ ^j^|^g qj^ ^j^g mainland was about 250,000, population there 
had almost doubled every twenty years, reaching approximately 500,000 
in 1720, 1,000,000 in 1740, and 2,000,000 in 1760. 

Almost every one was an immigrant or the son or grandson of an 

immigrant. America was holding out arms of welcome to all who 

would come to her shores and lend a hand in the work of 
Immigration. , . , . ..... ^ . , _ . . 

reducmg the contment to civiliza.tion. Said Benjamm 

Franklin in London to prospective emigrants to his native land: 

"Much less is it advisable for a person to go thither who has no other 



BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 99 

quality to recommend him but his birth. In Europe indeed it has 
value; but it is a commodity that cannot be carried to a worse market 
than to that of America, where people do not inquire concerning a 
stranger, What is he? but What can he do? If he has any useful art, 
he is welcome; if he exercises it, and behaves well, he will be respected by 




Colonial Stage 

all that know him; but a mere man of quality, who on that account 
wants to live on the public, by some office or salary, will be despised and 
disregarded. . . . Land being cheap in that country, from the vast 
forests still void of inhabitants, and not likely to be occupied in an age 
to come, insomuch that the propriety of an hundred acres of fertile 
soil full of wood may be obtained near the frontiers in many places, for 
eight or ten guineas, hearty young laboring men, who understand the 
husbandry of corn and cattle, which is nearly the same in that country 
as in Europe, may easily establish themselves. A little money, saved 
out of the good wages they receive there while they work for others, 
enables them to buy the land and begin their plantation, in which they 



loo THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

are assisted by the good will of their neighbors, and some credit. Mul- 
titudes of poor people from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Germany, 
have by this means in a few years become wealthy farmers, who in their 
own countries, where all the lands are fully occupied, and the wages of 
labor low, could never have emerged from the mean condition wherein 
they were born." 

Declaring that the people of the new continent sprang from a 
"promiscuous breed," Crevecoeur, himself a French immigrant, wrote 
"What is an as follows in the last half of the eighteenth century: 
American? " "What then is an American, this new Man? He is neither 
an European, nor the descendant of an European; hence that 
strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. 
I could point out to you a family, whose grandfather was an English- 
man, whose wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and 
whose present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He 
is an American, who leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and 
manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has embraced, 
the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds. He becomes 
an American by being received into the broad lap of our great 'alma 
mater.' Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of 
men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in 
the world. Americans are the western pilgrims, who are carrying along 
with them that great mass of arts, sciences, vigor, and industry, which 
began long since in the east. They will finish the great circle. The 
Americans were once scattered over all Europe. Here they are incor- 
porated into one of the finest systems of population which has ever 
appeared. . . . The American is a new man, who acts upon new 
principles; he must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new 
opinions. From involuntary idleness, servile dependence, penury and 
useless labor, he has passed to toils of a different nature, rewarded by 
ample subsistence. . . . This is an American." 

Although comparatively few immigrants came to her from England 
after the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660, New England throughout 
The different the colonial period remained almost purely English; and 
races. ^^g same race predominated in the eastern or seaboard sec- 

tions of Maryland, Virginia, and the Carolinas, while in Delaware, New- 
Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York, the English were mingled with 
the Dutch, Swedes, Germans, Scotch-Irish, and other races. The 
so-called Pennsylvania Dutch were properly not Dutch at all, but 
Germans who found a refuge in Eastern Pennsylvania from the devas- 
tation of wars and tyranny in their own states at home. The Scotch- 
Irish were people of Scotch descent, from the north of Ireland, mainly 



BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 loi 

Ulster, who left their homes to escape industrial and religious oppres- 
sion. They came by thousands; in some years ten thousand arrived in 
Pennsylvania alone. America probably gained half a million inhab- 
itants by this great migration. A few went into New Hampshire, but 
the greater part of them poured into the interior regions of Pennsyl- 
vania and south from there along the foot-hills of the Appalachians, 
where they were the predominant race, although there were also found 
here many French Huguenots, German Quakers or Mennonites, Scotch 
Highlanders, Swiss, Welsh, and Irish. Nearly all of these immigrants 
were Protestants, poor in this world's goods, fleeing the wars, persecu- 
tions, and untoward conditions of Europe. 

OCCUPATIONS 

On the seaboard and in the new West agriculture was well-nigh 
universal. The New Englander on his barren and rocky farm raised 
the simple necessities of life but could boast of no great Agriculture 
staple New England crop. The planters of the southern universal, 
colonies, on the other hand, and those in the West Indies, were blessed 
with the valuable staple crops of tobacco, sugar, rice, and indigo, which 
they raised largely to the exclusion of other products. The islands 
indeed produced sugar so extensively that some of them were habitually 
spoken of as the sugar islands, — the British sugar islands and the 
French sugar islands. 

New England was a land of villages and small farms. There the 
one long village street was usually found, bordered by farmhouses, 
with the farms stretching back in either direction; the 
ever-present meetinghouse, where the church-going habits villages of 
of the people encouraged sociability as well as piety; the NewEng- 
town hall, with its frequent public discussion, the village 
store, the inn, the schoolhouse, and frequently the blockhouse for 
refuge in case of attack by the Indians. 

The farm buildings themselves on any particular farm' were usually 
grouped closely together; in most cases indeed they were actually 
connected. A settler on a New England farm was not alone an agri- 
culturist, but by the very necessities of his frontier life he was trapper, 
hunter, lumberman, and Indian fighter as well, and the manufacturer 
of his own farming and household utensils and furnishings. 

In the country south of the Potomac, on the other hand, where the 
plantation, or very large farm, was the unit of society and towns and 
villages were little known, society lacked the sociability The southern 
of the New England village church, town hall, and store, plantation. 
Public inns for the entertainment of strangers were rare. Instead, 



I02 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

hospitality was dispensed in the plantation mansions themselves with 
the grace and charm of manner for which the Southerners became 
famous. The plantation was more or less a self-supporting unit. Scat- 
tered over its large area were the plantation mansion, the slave quarters, 
the school, the blacksmith shop, the carpenter shop, the carriage and 
wagon sheds, the stables, and various other buildings. Near-by was 
usually to be seen the stream of water, where, at his own wharf, the 
planter loaded his products for shipment and unloaded consignments 
of needed supplies from New England and from Europe. 

Between this aristocratic organization of society and the simple 
village life of New England the contrast was marked. As both sugar 

^^ and tobacco culture rapidly exhausted the soil, and as 

The two , , , ; , • 1 • , 

systems of new lands were cheap and easy to obtam, the typical 

agriculture southern plantation was many times larger than the New 
New England farm, that the fields might lie fallow at 
intervals for recuperation. The labor of black slaves was made use 
of in all sections, but mainly in the South, where the whites were 
unable to endure the strain of manual labor in the intense heat. More- 
over, in the less fertile North, where farming was more intensive and 
more skilled labor was required than in the South, black labor was 
not generally profitable. 

In the middle colonies — New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and 
Delaware — agriculture partook more of the character of that in New 
Agriculture in England than of that of the southern colonies. The farms 
the middle of these colonies, with the exception of the patroon estates 
of New York, were smaller than the southern plantations, 
and their crops were varied as in New England, though their richer 
soil made them a more promising agricultural region than rocky New 
England. 

Making a clearing in the woods presented much the same problem 
throughout America, whether on the seaboard, in the Shenandoah 
Making a Valley, or west of the Appalachians. The Marquis de 
farm in the Chastellux, an officer of the French army, who traveled 
through the country between 1780 and 1790, has de- 
scribed the settlement of the frontier as follows: "While I was medi- 
tating on the great process of nature, which employs fifty thousand 
years in rendering the earth habitable, a new spectacle, well calcu- 
lated as a contrast to those which I had been contemplating, fixed 
my attention, and excited my curiosity; this was the work of a single 
man, who in the space of a single year had cut down several harpents 
of wood, and built himself a house in the middle of a pretty extensive 
territory he had already cleared. I saw for the first time, what I have 



BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 103 

since observed a hundred times; for, in fact, whatever mountains I 
have cHmbed, whatever forests I have traversed, whatever by-paths I 
have followed, I have never traveled three miles without meeting a 
new settlement, either beginning to take form or already in cultivation. 

"The following is the manner of proceeding in these improvements, 
or new settlements. Any man who is able to procure a capital of five 
or six hundred livres in our money, or about twenty-five pound ster- 
ling, and who has strength and inclination to go to work, may go into 
the woods and purchase a portion of one hundred and fifty or two hun- 
dred acres of land, which seldom costs him more than a dollar or four 
shillings and sixpence an acre, a small part of which only he pays in 
ready money. There he conducts a cow, some pigs, or a sow, and two 
indifferent horses which do not cost him more than four guineas each. 
To these precautions he adds that of having a provision of flour and 
cider. Provided with this first capital, he begins by felling all the 
smaller trees, and some strong branches of the large ones; these he 
makes use of as fences to the first field he wishes to clear; he next boldly 
attacks those immense oaks, or pines, which one would take for the 
ancient lords of the territory he is usurping; he strips them of their 
bark, or lays them open all around with his axe. These trees, mortally 
wounded, are the next spring robbed of their honors; their leaves no 
longer spring, their branches fall, and the trunk becomes a hideous 
skeleton. This trunk still seems to brave the efforts of the new col- 
onist; but where there are the smallest chinks or crevices, it is sur- 
rounded by fire, and the flames consume what the iron was unable to 
destroy. But it is enough for the small trees to be felled, and the 
great ones to lose their sap. This object completed, the ground is 
cleared; the air and sun begin to operate on that earth which is wholly 
formed of rotten vegetables, and teems with the latent principles of 
production. 

"The grass grows very rapidly; there is pasturage for the cattle 
the very first year; after which they are left to increase, or fresh ones 
are bought, and they are employed in tilling a piece of ground which 
yields the enormous increase of twenty or thirty fold. The next 
year the same course is repeated; when at the end of two years, the 
planter has wherewithal to subsist, and even to send some articles to 
the market; at the end of four or five years, he completes the payment 
of his land, and finds himself a comfortable planter. Then his dwelling, 
which at first was no better than a large hut formed by a square of the 
trunks of trees, placed upon one another, with the intervals filled by 
mud, changes into a handsome wooden house, where he contrives more 
convenient and certainly much cleaner compartments than those in 



I04 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 







(a) 



the greatest part of our small towns. This is the work of three weeks 
or a month; his first habitation that of eight and forty hours. 

"I shall be asked, perhaps, how one man, or one family can be so 
quickly lodged? I answer that in America a man is never alone, never 

an isolated being. The 
neighbors, for they are 
everywhere to be found, 
make it a point of hos- 
pitality to aid the new 
farmer. A cask of cider 
drunk in common, and 
with gaiety, or a gallon 
of rum, are the recom- 
pense for these services. 
Such are the means by 
which North America, 
which one hundred years 
ago was nothing but a vast forest, is peopled with three millions of 
inhabitants." 

The first industry in North America in point of time, extensively 
engaged in by the whites before the colonies were established and 
never discontinued, was 
fishing. I n 
some way of 
which there is no record, 
venturesome fishermen 
reached these waters im- 
mediately after the first 
discoveries of Columbus, 
and carried to the coun- 
tries of western Europe 
announcement of the 
swarming shoals of fish 
off the shores of New- 
foundland. To the men and women of Europe in that day, who 
piously followed the observances of the church concerning the absti- 
nence from meat on the numerous fast days, the news was most wel- 
come. The new industry, small at first, while Spain was in control of 
the seas and the seafarers of other nations were constantly liable to 
attack, was rapidly extended when England became mistress of the 
seas. It is recorded that there were three hundred fishing vessels 
of all nations on the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in 1586, and one 



Fishing. 




(6) 



BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 



105 







T^^W'-TsS^*'-^^ 



(c) 



thousand thirty years later; forty or fifty English vessels annually made 
the journey thither before 1588, but by 1605, two years before the 
founding of Jamestown, and fifteen before that of Plymouth, at least 
two hundred and fifty English vessels reached the banks annually. As 
the neighboring New Eng- 
land frontier was occu- 
pied, the number of fishing 
vessels in its waters and 
off Newfoundland rapidly 
increased, for the New 
Englanders found fishing 
one of their most profit- 
able occupations. A 
nearer market for their 
fish than Europe was grad- 
ually developed in the 
West Indies. 

Trade with the Indians was inaugurated by the early fishermen and 
explorers, who observed along the shore where they landed to dry 
their fish or to explore the coast, that the natives were The Indian 
ready to exchange the skins of the fur-bearing animals trade. 

for trinkets. On his first 

-1 , -^T^v'^^-^ '^ voyage Columbus gave 

-^ i^3^^=^^=^ir.^-4'2^Lj^'^ "CZi^-'l-. small bells and glass 

"^~' — ^ ?— ^ — ^~~ ~^ ~ beads to the Indians in 

trade, and after him al- 
most every explorer was 
a trader also, Verrazano, 
La Salle, Champlain, and 
John Smith among the 
number. The last named, 
after his voyage along the 
New England coast in 
1614, carried to England 
40.000 dried fish, 11,000 beaver skins, and 200 skins of other animals; 
and he is authority for the statement that in six years, 1616-1622, 
England received from her outposts in America 20,000 beaver skins. 
In one period of five years soon after the founding of the settlement, 
Plymouth sent 12,500 pounds of furs to the mother country, and in 
the first part of the eighteenth century, Georgia shipped on the aver- 
age 200,000 deer skins annually. 

The moral character of the white traders was often deplorable; 



' *«<^*"»v;^-.^ 



ata-1 1 ) I I 






Growth of a Pioneer Home 



! L ] _1 I _jt 



io6 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

they cheated and debauched the Indians; yet they were always in the 

Nature of vanguard of civilization as it pushed its way westward, 

the Indian for it was on the farthest edge of the frontier that the 
trade 

Indian trade most flourished. The Indian loved the 

white man's woolen blanket, which he quickly learned to use in 

place of the more clumsy animal skins, and in his simplicity he loved 

the trinkets that were brought to him; but more than these, he loved 

the white man's rum, and would never do without it as long as he had a 

fur or anything else which the white man would take in trade. He 

preferred British goods to those of the French because of their lower 

price and superior quality, and this preference for the English trade 

served to perpetuate the prejudice of the Iroquois against the French 

and in favor of the English. 

The profitable British trade never languished throughout the 

colonial period. When the British asserted that they had gone into 

the French and Indian War for the benefit of their colonists, Benja- 

The Indian min Franklin replied that in his opinion that war had 

trade as a been waged by the British for the sure possession of the 

cause of the , i t- i- i ,> r ^ ■ ^ ■ • r ^ 

Seven Years' purely English lur trade m the mterior west oi the 
^^^- mountains, which constituted the third frontier of the Brit- 

ish and was the bone of contention in that war. 

Another American industry in the colonial period was shipbuilding, 
centered mainly in New England, where the pine forests furnished 
ShipbuUding excellent masts for "ships. Here the royal navy of Eng- 
and land looked for timber for many of its vessels. A trav- 

commerce. ^j^^. ^j^^ visited New England in 1759 stated that from the 
small towns along a single river in New Hampshire two hundred 
vessels were launched annually. Many of these were owned 
and manned, as well as built, in New England; and sailing from 
Boston, Salem, Newburyport, and the other seaboard towns, they 
engaged in an extensive carrying trade on the ocean, not only monopo- 
lizing the coastwise trade on the western shores of the Atlantic but 
even securing a part of that across the seas. 

An interesting trade sprang up with Africa and with the West Indies; 

fish, lumber, and food products were carried to the planters of the sugar 

^^ ,^ islands, where these articles were in demand, and in return 

The three- ... 

cornered sugar and molasses were brought back in large quantities to 

AfricaTnd ^^^ mainland. Hundreds of distilleries sprang up along the 

the West New England coast in the vicinity of Boston and in Rhode 

Indies. Island to manufacture the sugar and molasses into rum. 

In the one town of Newport, Rhode Island, there were a score of such 

distilleries, and a large number in and about the Massachusetts capital. 



BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 107 

Just as profitable as the sale of the rum to the Indians and equally 
questionable was the use made of the liquor to buy kidnapped 
slaves on the coast of Africa. Cargoes of the New England rum 
were taken to Africa, and in the returning vessels negro slaves were 
brought back to be sold to the West Indian and southern main- 
land planters. An extensive three-cornered traffic was thus carried 
on. Sailing in their own vessels, the New Englanders sold their 
products to the planters of the sugar islands, and from them obtained 
the sugar and molasses which they carried home and manufactured 
into rum. This they exchanged in Africa for the slaves, whom they 
traded for more molasses and sugar. Profits in the transaction, both 
in the islands and in New England, were enormous. 

In the middle of the eighteenth century, when the theaters of 
London desired to place before their audiences the most popular type 
of an heiress of fortune as the heroine of a play, the young lady in 
question was almost sure to be represented as the daughter -p. 
of a West Indian planter. Her marriage was as popular ity of the 
on the stage as that of the American millionaire's ^^ ° '®^' 
daughter to-day to the fortune-hunting noble of Europe. Hurricanes 
and earthquakes, tropical rainstorms and yellow fever, and the ever- 
present danger of slave insurrections combined to render the beautiful 
islands a less desirable place of residence than London, but they 
could not stop the profits of the plantations. On every one of the 
islands the blacks outnumbered the whites many times over. For 
example, in 1767, Jamaica numbered 17,000 whites and 167,000 blacks. 
The ever-increasing number of the blacks tended to keep the whites 
away, but at the same time constituted a fair index of the prosperity 
of the islands. While the wealth of the West Indies far exceeded that 
of the mainland, the fact that the islands were purely agricultural and 
must from their nature always remain so, made their future less prom- 
ising than that of the colonies on the mainland, where commerce and 
some slight beginnings of manufacturing augured future industrial 
development. 

In 1733, at the desire of the sugar planters of the British West 
Indies, the British Parliament in London passed the so-called Molasses 
Act, requiring the importers of sugar and molasses from ^j^^ Molas- 
non-British territory to pay a heavy tax or tariff duty, ses Act of 
when these articles were brought into British ports, and 
allowing the British sugar and molasses to come in free of duty. This 
was an attempt to force the colonists of the mainland to buy their 
sugar and molasses from their brethren of the British islands only. 
The products from the French islands were generally preferred to the 



io8 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

British products, so that the New Englanders continued to make their 
purchases in the French islands and to smuggle their cargoes into the 
ports at home free of duty in defiance of the law, which could not be 
enforced against local public opinion. 

In view not only of their independent spirit but also of their exten- 
sive trade interests, it can be seen how unpopular among the Americans 
The working rnust have been the other navigation acts as well as the 
of the navi- Molasses Act, by which Great Britain sought to regulate 
gation aws. ^^^ trade of the colonies. It was a hardship to the 
colonists to be forbidden to buy and sell certain articles on the 
continent of Europe, just as it was a hardship to have high tariff 
duties placed upon the sugar and molasses imported from the French 
sugar islands. Even intercolonial trade was hampered by heavy 
duties on the importation of certain goods from one British colony 
into another. Trade flourished despite the regulations. In the 
first place, not only the Molasses Act, but all the other trade laws 
went unenforced to a surprising extent. Smugglers built up large 
fortunes, and suffered no lack of public esteem because of their prac- 
tices; indeed, they were often the leading men of the community. 

There was, too, a favorable side to the navigation laws. The 
enumerated commodities, which could be shipped only to Great 
The favor- Britain, were given a preference in that market over 
able side of similar commodities from other countries. This was a 
e aws. great boon to the Southerners, whose staple products, 

such as sugar and tobacco, were on the favored list; nor was it any 
hardship to the Southerners to be restricted in the sale of these products 
to the British markets, which they would naturally seek. New 
Englanders, with no staple products for shipment, could not share 
in this advantage, but there was a source of profit for them in that 
their ships were allowed to participate in the monopoly of the carrying 
trade on the ocean between the mother country and the colonies, from 
which the ships of other nations were excluded. This was the begin- 
ning of the extensive shipping industry of New England. The hard- 
ships of the restrictions on buying were somewhat reduced by the 
system of drawbacks or rebates, by which the duties once paid in the 
customs houses of Great Britain on goods bought in other countries 
and shipped to America through Great Britain, were in part returned. 

Manufacturing, save as carried on in the home, made no headway 
in the colonies, as the mother country never intended that it should. 
Manufac- Great Britain in the middle of the eighteenth century 
^'^""s- was just beginning to have factories of her own, and she 

proposed to see no rivals to these spring up in her colonies. To encour- 



BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 109 

age the exportation from America of raw material rather than of manu- 
factured goods, she offered bounties on such American products as 
lumber, tar, turpentine, and hemp. She consciously repressed manu- 
facturing in the colonies by forbidding the exportation thence of woolen 
goods and hats; and in 1750 Parliament enacted that "no mill or other 
engine for slitting or rolling iron, no plating forge to work with a tilt 
hammer, and no furnace for making steel " should be " erected in any of 
His Majesty's colonies in America." This was a blow to the infant 
iron industry of Pennsylvania and the other middle colonies. These 
acts against manufacturing were far better enforced than the naviga- 
tion acts, and they brought it about that, while wool and iron were 
abundant in America, articles manufactured from these goods, save 
those made in private houses, were generally imported from Great 
Britain. Colonial manufacturing, therefore, consisting mainly of such 
activities as blacksmithing, spinning, weaving, dressing of leather, shoe- 
making, soap and candle making, and carpentry, was strictly domestic. 

COLONIAL TOWNS 

The life of the colonial towns has been pictured by various writers. 
Brissot de Warville, a French traveler, wrote of Boston in 1788: 
"The Bostonians unite simplicity of morals with that _ , 

1 1 T i ^ • ^ Boston. 

French politeness and delicacy of manners which render 
virtue more amiable. They are hospitable to strangers, and obliging 
to friends. ... In some houses you hear the pianoforte. . . . 
Neatness is seen everywhere in Boston, in their dress, in their houses, 
and in their churches. Nothing is more charming than an inside view of 
the church on Sunday. The good cloth coat covers the man; calicoes 
and chintzes dress the women and children. . . . Powder and poma- 
tum never sully the heads of infants and children; I see them with 
pain, however, on the heads of the men. . . . One of the principal 
pleasures of the inhabitants of these towns consists of little parties for 
the country among families and friends. The principal expence of the 
parties, especially after dinner, is tea. In this, as in their whole manner 
of living, the Americans in general resemble the English. . . . The uni- 
versity certainly contains men of worth and learning; but science is not 
diffused among the inhabitants of the town. Commerce occupies all 
their ideas, turns all their heads, and absorbs all their speculations." 
Andrew Burnaby, an English traveler, thus described New York: 
"The city is situated on a point of a small island. . . . The streets 
are paved and very clean; but in general they are narrow; ^^ ^ ^^ 
there are two or three indeed, which are spacious and airy, 
particularly the Broad Way. The houses in this street have most of 



no 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 



^_S >^ 'a, { -C ^" W:. ■ ^ - '~->- 




New York H-vkbor 



6. Part of Nutten Island. 

7. The Crane. 



The Fort. 

The Chappel in the Fort. 

The Secretaries Office. 8. The Lower Market. 

The Great Dock With a Bridge over it. 9. The Great Flesh Market. 

The Ruines of White Hall Built by Govemeur Duncan. 



them a row of trees before them, which form an agreeable shade and 
produce a pretty effect. The whole length of the town is something 
more than a mile; the breadth about half a one. . . . The inhab- 
itants . . . being however of different nations, different languages, 
arid different religions, it is almost impossible to give them any precise 
or determinate character. The women are handsome and agreeable, 
though rather more reserved than the Philadelphia ladies. Their 
amusements are much the same as in Pennsylvania, viz: balls and 
sleighing expeditions in the winter; and in the summer, going in parties 
on the water, and fishing; or making excursions in the country." 

Brissot de Warville wrote of Philadelphia: "Philadelphia may be 
considered as the metropolis of the United States. It is certainly 
the finest town and the best built; it is the most healthy, though not 
the most luxurious. You may find here more men of in- 
formation, more political and literary knowledge, and 
more learned societies. Many towns in America are more ancient, 
but Philadelphia has surpassed her elders. By ten o'clock in the 
evening all is tranquill in the streets; the profound silence which 
reigns there is only interrupted by the voice of watchmen, who are in 
small numbers and form the only patrol. The streets are lighted by 
lamps, placed like those in London. On the sides of the streets are 
footways of brick, and gutters constructed of brick or wood. Strong 
posts are placed to prevent carriages from passing on the footways. 



Philadelphia. 



BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 



III 




IN 1717. Redrawn from a rare print. 

10. The Dutch Church. 

11. The EngUsh Church. 

12. The City Hall. 

13. The E.x change. 



14. The French Church. 

15. The Upper Market. 

16. The Station Ship. 

17. A Wharf. 



All the streets are furnished with public pumps, in great number. 
At the door of each house are placed two benches, where the 
family sit at evening to take the fresh air. . . . Philadelphia is 
built on a regular plan; long and large streets cross each other at right 
angles. . . . The streets are not inscribed and the doors are not 
numbered. . . . The women wear hats and caps almost as varied as 
those of Paris. They bestow immense expences on their toilet and 
head dress. . . . The Philadelphians confine not their attentions to 
their brethren; they extend it to strangers; they have formed a 
society for the assistance of immigrants, who arrive from Germany. 
A similar one is found at New York, called the Hibernian Society, 
for the succor of immigrants from Ireland. These societies inform 
themselves of the arrival of a ship, of the situation of the immigrants, 
and procure them immediate employment." 

EDUCATION AND RELIGION 

John Adams once wrote that he had "an overweaning prejudice 
in favor of New England." "The public institutions in New England 
for the education of the youth," he went on, "supporting The progress 
colleges at the public expense and obliging towns to °* education, 
maintain grammar schools are not equaled, and never were, in any 
part of the world." In New England were Harvard College, founded 
in 1636, Yale College 1701, Rhode Island College (Brown University) 
1764, and Dartmouth College 1769; in the middle colonies were King's 
College (Columbia University) 1754, the College of New Jersey (Prince- 



112 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

ton University) 1746, Philadelphia College (University of Penn- 
sylvania) 1749, and Queen's College (Rutgers College) 1766; and 
in the South was William and Mary College, 1693. The middle 
colonies possessed public schools, though these were not general here 
as in New England; in the southern colonies public schools were 
almost unknown. The plantations were supplied with occasional 




^irtmlOfiTJi ESI irMlliii" 




Harvard College, i/ 



private schools, but these were poor in quality, and the rich planta-- 
tion owners usually sent their sons to the northern colleges or to 
Europe to be educated. 

The first book printed in the English colonies was the "Bay Psalm 
Book," published in Boston in 1640; the first newspaper, the News- 



BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 113 

Letter, appeared in 1704. Colonial publications were few and were 
confined largely to works on theology. 

Life on the colonial frontier, so many parts of which were settled 
by those fleeing from persecution for conscience' sake, was essentially 
religious. Usually the refugees were members of re- ^j^^ differ- 
ligious bodies out of accord with the common orthodox ent religious 
beliefs of the home countries. The strict Puritanism of ^^^ ^" 
New England gradually relaxed after the planting of the Church 
of England in Massachusetts toward the close of the seventeenth 
century, though the Puritan or Congregational Church remained 
the prevailing religious body. Roman Catholicism was strong at 
first in Maryland, but later the Church of England was dominant in 
that colony as well as in Virginia. The Baptists were strong in Rhode 
Island and the Dutch Reformed in New York. The Quakers were 
numerous in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and the Lutherans among 
the Pennsylvania Germans, while the Scotch-Irish in the "back coun- 
try" of Pennsylvania and southward were mainly members of the 
Presbyterian Church. There were Jews in small numbers in various 
parts of the seaboard. As in its early days under the Dutch, New York 
remained to the end of the colonial period a cosmopolitan center, 
frequented by men of divers sects. An old map of 1728 locates in the 
city a chapel of the Church of England, a Trinity Church, an Old 
Dutch Church, a New Dutch Church, a Presbyterian Meetinghouse, 
a Quaker Meetinghouse, a Baptist Meetinghouse, a Lutheran Church, 
and a Jewish Synagogue. 

COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 

The three kinds of colonies in America, corporate, proprietary, and 
royal, have already been described. There was a distinct tendency 
for the first two kinds to become royal, until in 1763, of 
the thirteen English-speaking colonies on the mainland, o/coionS 
two were corporate, three proprietary, and eight royal, administra- 
In the conduct of his office the governor of a royal colony 
was guided from Great Britain by his "commission "and "instructions." 
He exercised power in the legislative branch by his appointment, in 
most cases, of the members of the upper house of the legislature, and 
by his right to veto legislative enactments. In all the colonies, with 
the exception of Maryland, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, all bills ' 
passed by the legislature had to be sent to Great Britain for approval 
or disapproval, which was frequently long withheld. From 1765 
to 1775 probably as many as five hundred colonial bills were dis- 



114 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

allowed by the home government. All colonial bills, repugnant to 
the laws of England on the same subject, were null and void. The 
judicial branch of the government of the colony was dependent on the 
Crown for the appointment of the judges, and for the final decisions 
in all such cases as were appealed from the colonial to the British 
courts. There were at least one hundred and thirty-four such appeals 
from 1760 to 1770. 

Against this predominance of the home government in the different 
branches of the colonial administration the popularly elected lower 
The struggles branch of the legislature wielded several weapons, till 
of the colonial by the middle of the eighteenth century this lower 
assem les. branch and not the governor was in practical control of 
affairs. In the first place, the lower house frequently refused to allow 
the governor to superintend the expenditure of the money appropri- 
ated by its vote, but intrusted this function to boards created by itself. 
It refused to vote a regular salary to the governor, but made or with- 
held the grant as it chose, and raised or lowered the amount according 
to its own pleasure. In the same manner, if the upper or appointed 
house of the assembly, controlled by the governor, stood out against 
the lower house, the latter body had it within its power to exercise 
practical coercion by refusing to pass the necessary financial legis- 
lation. When the judges, appointed in England, seemed to be thwart- 
ing the popular will, they could be coerced, Hke the governor, by the 
power of the lower branch over their salaries. 

Politics in the colonies turned more or less on these questions at 

issue between the royal governors and the popular law-making body. 

Many a conflict was waged with extreme bitterness, but 

nature of with little Suggestion of disloyalty or of a desire to separate 

poUticai from Great Britain until 1774. For the most part, the 

questions. ... 

movement toward independence sprang out of an entirely 

different set of questions, to wit, those connected with the regulation 

of trade by Parliament. 

John Adams, in the letter already quoted, boastfully but truthfully 
touched upon a striking difference between the colonies of New England 
and those farther south in the matter of local government, 
ernmen^^in "The division of our territory, that is, of our county, into 
E^^ d townships, empowering towns to assemble, choose officers, 

make laws, mend roads, and twenty other things, gives 
every man an opportunity of showing and improving that education 
which he received at college or at school, and makes knowledge and 
dexterity at public business common." 

This is an allusion to the New England town meeting or mass 



BRITISH AMERICA IN 1763 115 

meeting of voters, which directly managed the affairs of the town. 

From the early records of the town of Providence, Rhode 

. The New 

Island, it appears that the town meeting there, which was England 

typical of the meeting in general, selected members of the *°*'" 
grand and petit juries; ordered that "no Geese shall be 
lett goe upon the Common or in the highways nor in the water in this 
township or within the jurisdiction thereof nor upon any other person's 
land"; voted the building of fences and gates along the pubHc roads; 
granted bounties for the killing of gray squirrels; inspected the town 
treasurer's accounts; approved of grants of money and clothing to the 
poor; determined upon the amount of taxes to be raised; and elected 
such officials as the town clerk, constable, treasurer, rate maker, sur- 
veyors of the highways, overseers of the poor, pound keepers, fence 
viewers, a packer and sealer, hog constables, hemp viewers, and 
deputies to the assembly or legislature of the colony. 

In the southern colonies of the mainland the unit of local govern- 
ment was not the town, for in this section there were but few towns, 
but rather the county. The county officials, the sheriff, 
the lieutenant colonel of the militia, the justices of the emment in 
peace, and the coroners were appointed by the governor, *^^ southern 
the chief function of the people being to elect their repre- 
sentatives to the colonial legislature. When, compared with local gov- 
ernment in New England, the southern system seems less democratic, 
but it had its advantages and afforded an excellent political training 
for all who were fortunate enough to belong to the office-holding class. 
In the War of Independence, which was soon to come, there were as 
many great leaders from the South as from the North: George Wash- 
ington, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and Richard Henry Lee, 
from Virginia, were as ardent champions of liberty as Samuel Adams, 
John Adams, John Hancock, and James Otis from Massachusetts. 

In the local government of the middle colonies there was a mixture 
of the New England and the southern systems; whatever the form of 
government, the people of the middle colonies, in com- The middle 
mon with the New Englanders and the Southerners, were coloi^es. 
devoted to popular government, and gave to the cause of liberty such 
men as John Dickinson, Benjamin FrankHn, Robert Morris, Robert 
Livingston, and John Jay. 

There were property qualifications for voting in all the colonies, and 
in some, strict religious qualifications, so that the actual number of 
voters, in proportion to the population, was small. In The 
New York City eight per cent of the people voted; in suffrage. 
Philadelphia and in Massachusetts and Connecticut only two per 



ii6 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

cent. Everywhere the suffrage was in the hands of a small fraction of 
the people. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Channing, United States, II-III; W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social New 
England; P. A. Bruce, Economic Virginia; P. Kalm, Travels; Marquis de Chastel- 
Lux, Travels; St. John de Crevecceur, Letters; Fisher, Men, Women, and Manners; 
J. WooLMAN, Journal; B. Franklin, Autobiography. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. Town and County Government. Channing, Town and County Government; 
Old South Leaflets, 1,4, and VII, 156; Contemporaries, II, 214-223; Source Book, 132-136. 

2. The Southern Plantation. Contemporaries, III, 4g-S3; Source Book, gi-g2. 

3. The Indian Trade. Epochs, II, 145-153; Contemporaries, II, 35-49; Chan- 
ning and Lansing, Great Lakes, 135-150; Source Book, 100-103. 

4. The Scotch-Irish. C. A. Hanna, The Scotch-Irish; C. K. Bolton, Scotch- 
Irish Pioneers. 

5. The Germans. O. Kuhns, Germans and Swiss; A. B. Faust, German Element, 
I, 1-286; F. R. Diffenderffer, German Immigration, — Part 11, Rcdemptioners. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

Stowe, Minister's Wooing, and Oldtown Folks; Barr, Maid of Maiden Lane, and 
Trinity Bells. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

What is the meaning of the word "economic"? Describe the plantation system 
of agriculture. Describe a New England town meeting. Was the town meeting or 
the county system the better able to produce statesmen and leaders? What, in 
Crevecceur's opinion, was an American? Describe the experiences of a settler on the 
extreme frontier. Describe life in a colonial town. Why did not fur trading lead 
to fi.xed settlements? Why were there but few towns in the South? What indus- 
tries did Great Britain encourage in America, and what did she discourage, and why? 
Men of what different religions sects sought refuge in America from persecution? 



CHAPTER XII 
THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 

THE NEW REVENUE LAWS 

Defeat of their rivals after a half century of conflict, giving un- 
disputed possession of an immensely enlarged territory, stretching 

from the frozen north to the Gulf of Mexico and from ^. 

The effect 
the West Indies to the Mississippi, raised new prob- on the Brit- 

lems and led the British statesmen into an entirely new '^^/"^ *^®"" 

method of dealing with the colonies. In the early days 

of the seventeenth century it was a great experiment in the world's 

history for one nation to attempt to build up and govern a frontier in 

the wilderness thousands of miles away and separated from the home 

country by a vast ocean. The British had gone into the experiment 

and had on the whole succeeded admirably, as their prosperous and 

rapidly growing colonies of the eighteenth century proved. Then, 

going blindly in the face of this acknowledged success, they adopted 

an entirely different policy and lost thirteen of their most promising 

colonies. 

The British statesmen determined to centralize the control of the 
enlarged empire in London more than ever before, to send forth to the 
colonies royal officials of new and greater powers, to ^j^^ ^^^ 
station more British soldiers in the different parts of the colonial 
empire, and in the Parliament in London to pass more ^° ^^' 
stringent colonial laws; all despite the fact that the colonists them- 
selves preferred to have things continue in the old way, without new 
reminders of Great Britain's power over them. Let it be remembered 
that Great Britain did not aim her new legislation at the "thirteen 
colonies." Had any one at the time spoken of the "thirteen colonies," 
the expression would have conveyed no meaning, for no one would 
have known which thirteen colonies were meant. Great Britain had 
more than twenty colonies in America and her new policy applied to 
them all, to Jamaica and Barbados as well as to Massachusetts and 
Virginia. 

To maintain the new empire and to pay the heavy indebtedness 
incurred in building it up, which had doubled in a few years and by 

117 



ii8 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

1763 amounted to £140,000,000, additional revenue was imperative. 

. As a first step, it was decided, even before the last war 

enforcement with the French was concluded, to attempt the rigid en- 

ofthenavi- forcement of the existing navigation or tariff laws, and 
gation laws. , , . • , r ^ , 

thus compel the Americans to pay a share of the new bur- 
dens. The common disregard of these regulations found especially 
flagrant expression in the unpatriotic course of merchants who traded 
with the fleets and garrisons of the French even while hostilities were in 
progress. To stop the practice the courts issued writs of assistance, 
which were general search warrants, authorizing the customs officials 
to search any house or building whatsoever at any time for smuggled 
goods. James Otis, a lawyer of Boston, in an impassioned argument 
before the courts against the writs, voiced the opposition of the colo- 
nists: "It appears to me the worst instrument of arbitrary power . . . 
that ever was found upon an English law book. . . . One of the most 
essential branches of English liberty is the freedom of one's house. A 
man's house is his castle, and whilst he is quiet, he is as well guarded 
as a prince in his castle. . . . What a scene does this open! Every 
man, prompted by revenge, ill humor or wantonness, to inspect the 
inside of his neighbor's house, may get a writ of assistance." The 
writs had frequently been employed in England and occasionally 
in the colonies, and Otis lost the case. 

Secondly, to increase the revenue from America, the Molasses 
Act of 1733 was succeeded by the Sugar Act of 1764, which reduced 

the old duty on molasses by one-half, and placed new 
law, the duties on coffee, pimento, wines, silks, linens, and sugar. 

^^'sar Act Strict measures were taken to enforce the law. All 

officers and even common sailors on ships of war were 
authorized to assist the regular revenue officials in the suppression of 
smuggling, and all offenders were to be tried, not in the ordinary 
courts of law, but in the admiralty courts without a jury. The 
amount of revenue accruing was not materially increased, whilst an 
undesirable spirit of resentment against the mother country was 
aroused, especially in commercial New England. 

The Sugar Act was a part of the new financial policy of the Prime 
Minister, George Grenville, the head of the British Cabinet. At his 
The stamp advice, too, Parliament passed the Stamp Act of 1765, 
*"• which the British historian Lecky has characterized as 

"one of the most momentous legislative acts in the history of mankind." 
This latter act required the Americans to place stamps, which were to 
be purchased from the government, upon legal documents of various 
kinds, upon newspapers, pamphlets, almanacs, playing cards, and 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 



119 




many other articles. The tax on wills was to be five shillings; on every 
pack of playing cards purchased, one shilling; on every advertisement 
in the newspapers, two shillings; and on every almanac two pence. 
Such a tax was simple and direct, and it was 
thought that it would be easily and cheaply col- 
lected; evasion would be difficult; and it was 
confidently predicted that the sale of the stamps 
would yield a revenue of many thousand pounds 
per year. The promise was given to the colonies 
by the British government that the first revenue 
secured from the sale of the stamps would be 
expended for the immediate purpose of putting 
down the conspiracy of Pontiac, an uprising of 
the Indians west of the AUeghanies, and that 
under no circumstances would any portion of 
the money be expended outside of America. 

Massachusetts had levied such a tax upon herself in 1755, Great 
Britain collected such a tax at home, and taxes of the same nature 
are now collected in the United States; but the Americans 
of 1765 flatly refused to have anything to do with a tax 
imposed on them by the British. In New York a con- 
gress of nine mainland colonies, called the Stamp Act 
Congress, came together to plan systematic opposition, 
fessing "all due subordination to that august body, the Parliament 
of Great Britain," the Congress maintained "that it is inseparably 
essential to the freedom of a free people, and the undoubted right of 
Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed upon them but with their own 
consent, given personally or by their representatives," and that the 
colonies "are not and from their local circumstances cannot be repre- 
sented in the House of Commons of Great Britain." The distributor 
of the new stamps in Boston was hanged in effigy from a tree in the 
main street of the town, the stamp office torn down, and the home of 
Chief Justice Hutchinson sacked. In New York the effigy of the 
governor of the colony was paraded around the town and then burned. 
On the day when the act was to go into effect, flags were hung at half- 
mast, shops were closed, bells were tolled, and copies of the Stamp 
Act were hawked about the streets bearing the inscription, "The 
folly of England and the ruin of America." 

Few stamps were sold. Merchants, to express their resentment 
to the mother country, ceased importations from Britain, ^j^^ repeal 
until finally, at the wish of the British commercial classes, of the stamp 
who feared the loss of the entire American trade if the colo- 



SHILLING, li 
British St.\mp 



Attitude of 
the colonies 
toward the 
stamp tax. 

While pro- 



tax. 



I20 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

nies were further exasperated, the act was repealed. Accompanying 
the Repeal Act, however, was the Declaratory Act, to the effect that 
Great Britain had full power to make laws "to bind the colonies and 
people of America, subjects of the Crown of Great Britain, in all cases 
whatsoever." 

British and American views in regard to the respective rights of 
colony and mother country, of King and Parliament, were now in 
Constitutional violent collision. The Americans contended that Par- 
arguments, liament, even if it had come to exercise the royal power 
in Great Britain, had not the same jurisdiction over the colonies as 
had the Crown, which in the beginning had granted the charters. In 
certain of these charters "the rights of EngHshmen" were definitely 
guaranteed to the colonists. No one at all conversant with English 
history could deny that one of the dearest rights of Englishmen was 
to vote their own taxes. On this point the Americans made a distinc- 
tion between internal and external taxes. Theoretically they did not 
consider that it was contrary to the rights of Englishmen for the 
mother country to regulate the foreign trade of the colonies by tariff 
taxes, although, as has been seen, they inconsistently evaded their pay- 
ment. Internal taxes, however, collected not for the sake of regulating 
commerce but primarily to raise revenue to pay the expenses of the 
government, were a different matter. It was their undoubted right 
as Englishmen, the Americans claimed, to have a voice in the imposi- 
tion of such taxes, and without their consent the taxes would be void. 

It was sheer nonsense to hold up to the Americans in the crisis 
the British theory that every member of the House of Commons 
represented in that body every subject in the kingdom, 
American and that consequently the Americans, as members of the 

views of rep- British empire, were represented in the Parliament in 
London. The British and the American views of repre- 
sentation were quite different, and just here was a source of misunder- 
standing. The Americans were in the habit of apportioning their 
representatives in their several colonial legislatures according to 
population, and changing the number and size of the districts as 
population changed; each district in America, moreover, elected its 
representative from among its own residents. The British, on the 
other hand, did not change their apportionment of representatives as 
population changed, and hence with the century-old division of dis- 
tricts new centers of population, such as the manufacturing cities of 
Manchester and Sheffield for example, were often without an elected 
representative of their own. A member elected to the House of 
Commons from any district was not necessarily a resident of that 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 121 

district but might hail from any section of the kingdom. The Ameri- 
cans, knowing that they elected no representative to the British 
Parliament and that none left their shores to attend the meetings of that 
body, could well claim, from their point of view, that they were unrepre- 
sented in the law-making body in London, and they failed to accept 
the British explanation that as members of the empire they were 
represented by all the members of the House of Commons. 

In justification of the British taxation of America was the course 
of Spain, which derived large revenues from her American possessions. 

She exacted from her American subjects a poll tax, a tax 

, . , J , , , , The colonial 

on sales, import and export taxes, a convoy tax, a tax on taxes of 

the sale of offices and on the sale of indulgences, and re- S^*^" ^°^ 

11 • • r 1 ,• r , France. 

ceived the entire income from the state moi^iopohes of the 

sale of gunpowder, salt, tobacco, and quicksilver. From these sources and 

from the mines Spain in the year 1796 derived from America a revenue 

of $16,000,000. France also imposed taxes on her American possessions. 

Pitt, who had carried his country triumphantly through the French 

and Indian War, stood firmly for the rights of the Americans. "I 

rejoice that America has resisted," he said in the debate t, •.• ^ 

•' ' rsntish sym- 

over the repeal of the stamp tax. "Three millions of pathy for the 
people so dead to all the feelings of liberty, as volun- *^° onies. 
tarily to submit to be slaves, would have been fit instruments to 
make slaves of the rest. . . . The gentleman tells us of many who 
are taxed and are not represented. . . .But they are all inhabit- 
ants, and, as such, are they not virtually represented? ... If 
the gentleman does not understand the difference between external and 
internal taxes, I cannot help it; but there is a plain distinction between 
taxes levied for the purpose of raising a revenue, and duties imposed 
for the regulation of trade, for the accommodation of the subject. 
. . . America, if she fell, would fall like the strong man. She would 
embrace the pillars of the state, and pull down the constitution along 
with her." He urged that continued peaceful trade with America was 
of more value to the British people than the pittance that could be 
obtained by taxation. Burke, Conway, and Barre held the same 
views, and in general the Whig party opposed the stamp tax and all 
the oppressive policies of the government in American administration. 
Though the Whigs were the party that had waged successfully the 
French and Indian War, George III, upon his accession to the throne 

toward the close of that war, forced their leaders out of ,,. . -^ 

cr 1 • 1 ■'■"^ arbitrary 

office and gathered about him the King's Friends," course of 

who were mainly members of the Tory party. Under ^^^^^^ ^^^• 

the two preceding monarchs, George I and George II, who were 



122 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 




thoroughgoing Germans, caring little for England and hardly able to 

speak the English language, the prestige of the Crown had waned fast, 

and the cabinet, the meetings of which the King rarely attended, had 

_ come to exercise the royal 

^'' T'x-^ prerogatives. George III 

was English in his educa- 
tion, a man of tremendous 
will power and energy, 
though not of great intel- 
lectual ability. When as 
a youth of twenty-two he 
was crowned in 1760, his 
mother, with sorrowful ref- 
erence to the low estate to 
'^^''^i.'> which the royal power had 
fallen, admonished him, 
"George, be King!" and 
under the inspiration of 
this admonition, George set 
out to win back the lost 
powers and to be "every 
inch a King." He insisted 
on ministers of his own 
choice, though they did not enjoy the confidence of the House of Com- 
mons, and he resorted to bribery and corruption to push his measures 
through Parliament. 

Under the leadership in the House of Commons of Charles Town- 

shend. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Great Britain turned to new tariff 

taxes in 1767, and by the Townshend Acts added tea, glass, 

taxes. *The lead, paper, and a few other things to the list of articles 

Townshend upon which the Americans were to pay an import tax. 

Acts of 1767. ^^ . 1 X- r v 

It was more than a regulation of commerce; it was a 
revenue measure, the income from which was to be used to pay the 
salaries of the colonial judges and governors, and thus free these 
officials from the control exercised over them by the colonial legis- 
latures. Parliament at the same time provided that the legislature 
of New York should be suspended from sitting for refusing to make 
provision for the British regulars, who were sent to the colonies in 
accordance with the Quartering Act of 1765. This action brought 
up the question whether or not Parliament could break up a colonial 
legislature. The further order that, while the colony remained obdu- 
rate, the governor of New York should give his assent to no laws 



George III 
After a portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds. 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 123 

passed in that colony, raised the question whether or not it was the 
business of Parhament to interfere with the local laws passed by the 
Americans for themselves. 

The Americans met the new tariff duties with a storm of opposition. 
At the instigation of Virginia formal non-importation societies were 
organized in the various colonies to boycott British ^j^^ opposi- 
goods on an extensive scale. In one year importations tion of the 
from Great Britain fell off one-half, and in three years only '^^ °^^ ^' 
£16,000 of revenue were collected, which it cost £200,000 to collect. 
Stamp taxes and tariff taxes, internal and external taxes, were thus 
alike objectionable; in the heat of resentment the distinction be- 
tween the two kinds of taxes was disregarded. 

In the discussion following the enactment of the Townshend Acts, 
there appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper a series of essays entitled 
"Letters from a Farmer in Pennsylvania to the Inhabit- , , p.. 
ants of the British Colonies," which had a wide influence, inson's 
The author was John Dickinson, who had written the L^f5™^ff' 
resolutions of the Stamp Act Congress and was soon to be 
known as one of the foremost political writers in America. He did not 
argue for independence, but said: "Let these truths be indelibly 
impressed upon our minds: that we cannot be happy without being 
free; that we cannot be free without being secure in our property; that 
we cannot be secure in our property, if, without our consent, others 
may, as by right, take it away; that taxes imposed on us by Parliament, 
do thus take it away." 

By virtue of the Quartering Act passed in 1765, for refusal to obey 
which the New York legislature was suspended, the colonies were 
required to provide for the accommodation of British The Boston 
regulars, who were to be sent to America in greater num- Massacre, 
bers than formerly to defend the enlarged empire. Late in 1768 the 
King sent two regiments to Boston, where their presence soon caused 
the trouble which might have been expected. On the night of the fifth 
of March, 1770, after a false alarm of fire had called together a large 
concourse of people, a crowd of men and boys began to harass and 
insult a handful of red-coated soldiers on guard in one of the prin- 
cipal streets, calling out, "Rascals!" "Lobsters!" and such epithets, 
and hurling snowballs, stones, and other missiles at them, until the 
soldiers opened fire in self-defense. Five of the mob were killed and" 
six wounded. Though the troops were speedily removed from the 
town to an island in the harbor, the damage had been done; the con- 
ciliating removal came too late, and the Americans were provided 
with another grievance. 



124 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 



The soldiers who fired the shots were tried for their Hves in the 
courts of Massachusetts, and after a fair trial all were acquitted with 
The trial of the exception of two, who were found guilty of man- 
the soldiers, slaughter and lightly punished. The efforts of two 
prominent colonial lawyers, John Adams and Josiah Quincy, in behalf 











:fev -^^"^ 



The Boston Massacre 
By Paul Revere. 

of the accused, and the conservative verdict of the jury were evidence 
that the Americans as a whole were fair-minded and not bloodthirsty. 
The massacre in Boston was followed by a period of excited public 
discussion, which afforded to the fertile genius of Samuel Adams 
Committees opportunity to put into operation a bold experiment, 
of corres- By his suggestion the various towns of Massachusetts 
pon ence. appointed committees of correspondence to carry on dis- 
cussion from one end of the colony to the other, to keep every part 
informed of the state of public sentiment in every other part, in short, 
to continue the agitation. Somewhat later a new wave of excitement 
swept over the colonies, following an attempt on the part of Great 
Britain to apprehend and punish the ring-leaders of a mob in Providence, 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 125 

Rhode Island, which had burned to the water's edge the Gaspee, a 
vessel of the royal navy engaged in suppressing smuggling; and when, 
in the outburst, Virginia suggested committees of correspondence 
among the different colonies, the plan was adopted and proved unex- 
pectedly effective in binding the colonies together. 

The non-importation societies, by bringing about a reduction in 
the amount of British goods sold in America, again induced Great 
Britain to change her laws, until a tax on tea was all The tariff on 
that was left of the objectionable tariff, and this was only *®^- 
threepence on the pound. In fact, tea could be bought more cheaply 
in America than in England; but the principle of taxation without 
representation was involved, and on this point the Americans would 
not yield. 

When a consignment of tea arrived in Boston harbor, citizens of 
Cambridge, Brookline, Roxbury, Dorchester, Charlestown, and Boston 
joined in a mass meeting, which voted unanimously that The Boston 
the tea be taken back to England. When more than two '^^^ Party, 
weeks had passed and the tea ships still lay at the wharf, a large town 
meeting came together in Old South Meetinghouse in Boston, and 
demanded that the governor order the tea to be taken away. While 
the crowd was waiting for his answer, a voice called out, amid applause, 
"Who knows how tea will mingle with salt water?" The governor 
sent his refusal, and Samuel Adams rose and announced to his assembled 
fellow-citizens, "This meeting can do nothing more to save the coun- 
try." A shout of fifty passing "Indians" was heard outside the door, 
and the crowd filed out of the meetinghouse to the wharf and stood in 
silence for three hours in the darkness of the night, while the "Indians" 
pitched the three hundred and forty chests of tea into the ocean in the 
famous Boston Tea Party. So still was the crowd that the click of 
the hatchets was distinctly heard by those on shore. The date was 
nine days before Christmas, 1773. Said an English writer, upon hearing 
of the occurrence, "Beware, little town, count the cost, and know well 
if you dare to defy the wrath of Great Britain, and if you love exile, and 
poverty, and death rather than submission." At New York and 
Philadelphia also the hated cargo of the tea ships was not allowed to 
be landed. Taxation without representation was a failure in America. 

THE INTOLERABLE ACTS 

"The town of Boston," said one member of the British Parliament, 
"ought to be knocked about the ears and destroyed. You will never 
meet with proper obedience of the laws till you have destroyed 



126 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

that nest of locusts." Under the leadership of Lord North, who was 
The five ^^^ Prime Minister, Parliament in 1774 passed three 

Intolerable coercive acts: first, the Boston Port Bill, by which the 
^'^^^' port of Boston was closed to commerce and the custom- 

house located at Salem, till Boston paid for the tea which had been 
destroyed and gave promise of good behavior in the future; second, 
the Massachusetts Government Act, remodeling the charter of Massa- 
chusetts and ordering that the upper house of the legislature, till then 
elected by the lower house, be appointed by the King, that the judges 
and sheriffs be appointed by the governor, that the jurymen be selected 
by the sheriffs and no longer by the people, and that the powers of the 
town meeting be curtailed; and third, the Administration of Justice 
Act, providing that if murder was committed in Massachusetts and the 
governor deemed that the crime had been committed in aiding the 
magistrates to put down riot and insurrection and that a fair trial 
could not be had in the province, the accused might be taken to another 
province or to Great Britain for trial. These three coercive measures 
of 1774 were aimed at Massachusetts alone. Two other "Intolerable 
Acts" were passed by Parliament at the same time. One reenacted 
the Quartering Act of 1765, and the other concerned the government 
of the new colony of Quebec, won from France in 1763. 

This latter, or Quebec Act, provided for an arbitrary form of govern- 
ment for that colony, with restricted right of trial by jury, no popular 
The Quebec law-making, and with the Roman Catholic religion prac- 
Act. tically set up as the state religion of the province. When 

it was known that the limits of Quebec, under such principles of 
government, were extended south and west to the Ohio, where Massa- 
chusetts, Connecticut, New York, and Virginia had claims to the land, 
there was an outburst of indignation. 

The rapid succession of events could have but one meaning, the 
mother country and her colonies did not understand one another. 
A crisis was at hand. 

Massachusetts and her sister colonies acted together with wonderful 

unanimity. That the people of persecuted Boston might not suffer, 

loads of supplies were poured in on the town from every 

to stricken quarter, from far-away Maryland, Virginia, and South 

Massachu- Carolina, as well as from the near-by towns. The mer- 

S6ttS. 

chants of Salem and Marblehead gave to their Boston 
neighbors the free use of their wharves and warehouses. The first 
day of June, 1774, when the new coercive acts were to go into effect, 
was generally observed as a day of fasting and prayer. 

Still more remarkable was the cooperation of twelve continental 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 127 

colonies in sending representatives to Philadelphia to discuss the 
situation and if possible devise a plan of common action, ^j^^ pj^.^^ 
in what came to be known as the First Continental Con- Continental 
gress. The call for this Congress was issued by the legis- oi^s^ess. 
lature of Massachusetts, on the motion of Samuel Adams. "A 
meeting of committees, from the several colonies on this continent is 
highly expedient and necessary," ran the call, "to consult upon the 
present state of the colonies, and the miseries, to which they are, and 
must be reduced, by the operation of certain acts of Parliament respect- 
ing America; and to deliberate and determine upon wise and prope^ 
measures to be by them recommended to all the colonies, for the 
recovering and establishment of their just rights and liberties, civil 
and religious, and the restoration of union and harmony between 
Great Britain and the colonies, most ardently desired by all men." 
Common danger was driving the different colonies together, for it was 
felt that if the Parliament of Great Britain could thus lightly disregard 
the charter of Massachusetts, no one could tell on what other part of 
the country the next blow would fall. Massachusetts sent John Adams 
and Samuel Adams to the Congress, Delaware sent John Dickinson, and 
Virginia Richard Henry Lee, Patrick Henry, and George Washington. 
The more or less united action of the colonies of the mainland on pre- 
vious occasions partially explains the success of the new movement. 
There had been the New England Confederation of four colonies in the 
middle of the seventeenth century, the gathering in New York in 1690 
to confer in regard to defense against the French and Indians, the 
Albany congress of 1754, the Stamp Act Congress of 1765, and the 
committees of correspondence. 

The First Continental Congress of 1774 was outwardly a loyal 
body with no revolutionary tendencies apparent, but it nevertheless 
strenuously objected to the late "tyrannical acts" ^^ xh 1 
Great Britain. It expressed sympathy for the town of of the Con- 
Boston, and adopted the so-called Association, which, tjnentai 
so far as the use of British goods and the shipment to 
Britain of American goods were concerned, was "a non-importation, 
non-consumption, and non-exportation agreement." Effort was made 
to increase the effectiveness of the boycott of British goods by the 
appointment in every county, city, and town, of those "whose business 
it shall be attentively to observe the conduct of all persons touching 
this Association"; and these local committees were directed to publish 
the names of all who refused to carry out the terms of the boycott. 

The Congress which took this firm stand differed from the pres- 
ent law-making Congress of the United States, for the votes of the 



128 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 



members from any one colony could be controlled by the revolutionary 
assemblies, conventions, and committees that appointed them. It 
had no power to carry out its acts, but depended on public opinion for 
their enforcement. 

OPENING ACTS OF WAR 

The governor of Massachusetts under Great Britain's new method of 
administering the colony was General Gage. When he summoned the 

legislature to meet in Salem, whither he had removed 
sefts^under the capital of the colony from Boston, and then withdrew 
her changed ^j^g ^q1\, that body met in spite of him, and as a professed 

revolutionary body assumed control of the colony outside 
the territory in and around Boston, which was in the hands of British 
soldiers. The people were invited to pay taxes to the revolutionary 
government and to organize local militia companies and committees of 
safety, which they proceeded to 
do. Affairs in Massachusetts were 
rapidly taking on a martial aspect. 
Within less than a year the 
presence of the British regulars 

led to a rupture which 

went far beyond the 

Boston massacre both 

in immediate and in 
permanent results. The thousands 
of royal troops in Boston were 
matched by a large body of native 
militia or minutemen, recruited 
from the inhabitants of the sur- 
rounding towns, ready to be on 
the march at a minute's notice 
against any hostile demonstration 
on the part of the British. A 
warning came in the early morn- 
ing of the nineteenth of April, 
1775, when Paul Revere galloped 
through the countryside from Bos- 
ton to Lexington and Concord and 
roused the inhabitants with the 
news, "The British are coming!" 



The battle 
of Concord 
and Lexing 
ton. 




The Minute Man 

From the statue at Concord by Daniel C. French. 

Photograph copyright Detroit Publishing Co. 



So they were, eight hundred strong, with orders to destroy the mili- 
tary stores of the patriots in Concord and to arrest two of the patriot 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 129 

leaders, Samuel Adams and John Hancock, for treason. In a few 
hours the redcoats drew up on Lexington green, confronted by fifty 
minutemen under Captain Parker. No one knows who fired the 
first shot. The Americans claimed that this responsibility belonged 
to the British commander, Major Pitcairn, who shouted, "Disperse, 
ye villains!" and then gave the order to fire, while the British de- 
clared that the first shots came from rebels hidden behind stone 
walls. Eight of the minutemen were killed and ten wounded. The 
British column moved on to Concord to destroy the stores there, 
but found that most of these had been removed to places of safety 
before their arrival. Adams and Hancock escaped. Then the British 
had to run the gauntlet back to Boston between little squads of the 
hostile farmers peppering away at them as they passed, from behind 
stone walls and trees. It was a nightmare of a retreat, and despite 
their reenforcements from Boston, ended in a loss for the British of two 
hundred and seventy-three killed, wounded, and captured. The loss 
of the Americans was ninety-three. 

The news of the fighting spread rapidly. Men from twenty-three 
towns joined in the fight before it was over, one company marching six- 
teen miles in four hours. Patriot leaders came from all 
New England. Colonel Israel Putnam on horseback cov- spread of the 

ered the distance of one hundred miles from his home in ^^'^J °^ *^® 

. Ti ,• battle. 

Connecticut to Boston in eighteen hours. Benedict 

Arnold arrived from Connecticut, and John Stark from New Hampshire. 

The outbreak took place on Wednesday, and by Saturday night the 

British were besieged in Boston by 18,000 Americans. 

The victorious and excited Americans took the offensive by dispatch- 
ing an expedition against the forts of Ticonderoga and Crown Point 
on Lake Champlain. The Green Mountain Boys of Ver- 
mont, under Ethan Allen and Seth Warner, led the attack, of Ticonder- 
and three weeks after Concord and Lexington, on May 10, r^^^JJ*\, -^^^ 
the two fortresses surrendered. The captured stores of 
two hundred cannon and large supplies of powder and ball proved of 
immense value to the patriot cause. 

Meanwhile the siege of Boston continued. On the night of June 
16, 1775, Colonel William Prescott, with twelve hundred The battle of 
men, occupied Breed's Hill which adjoined Bunker Hill, Bunker Hill, 
on the peninsula of Charlestown, overlooking Boston. On the morn- 
ing of the seventeenth the British were astonished to see the hastily 
constructed fortifications frowning down upon them. The position of 
the Americans had been rashly chosen. By seizing the narrow neck 
of land connecting the peninsula with the mainland and thus cutting 



I30 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 




SCALE OF MILES 



Boston and Vicinity 



ofif the retreat of the Americans, the British could have destroyed 
the colonial army at their pleasure; but General Gage, believing that 

"the rabble of New England" could 
not possibly stand before European 
regulars, offset the folly of their choice 
by his own folly in determining upon 
a frontal attack. Giving the narrow 
neck of land a wide berth, Gage sent 
an army under General Howe by wa- 
ter to the other end of the peninsula 
at the bottom of the hill, to march 
up and drive the enemy before them. 
On the first attempt they got to within 
fifty yards of the American entrench- 
ments and then fell back before the 
fire directed against them. They 
charged a second time, and suc- 
ceeded in getting within thirty yards 
of the foe before they were driven back. In the third attempt they 
were successful, because the Americans had no more powder. The 
persistency of the British cost them one thousand fifty-four men in 
killed and wounded, or more than a third of their entire force. The 
Americans lost four hundred and forty-nine, among them Doctor 
Joseph Warren, who, with the two Adamses and John Hancock, 
had been a leader in the revolt in Massachusetts. Evidently their 
frontier life had made good shots out of the New England "rab- 
ble." While the battle was a small one and a defeat for the Ameri- 
cans, never has a defeat had more inspiriting effects. The fighting 
blood of America was stirred, and the belief in the superiority of British 
regulars over provincial volunteers was dispelled. 

Two weeks after the engagement at Breed's Hill, commonly known 

as the Battle of Bunker Hill, George Washington of Virginia arrived 

in Cambridge to take charge of the American forces around 

Washington Boston. The Continental Congress had appointed him to 

as comman- j}^g command of the American forces because of his military 
der-in-chief. . . , . , ^ , , t i- ttt rr^i 

reputation, acquired m the r rench and Indian War. 1 hey 

hoped that his appointment would rally the southern colonies to 

the cause, which, so far as open hostilities were concerned, had been 

up to this time merely a local insurrection in New England. The 

forces at Boston gave the new commander a hearty welcome. 

In September of the same year, 1775, the colonies in revolt attempted 

the conquest of Canada, in the hope of attaching this province to their 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 131 

cause. One army, proceeding northward from Lake Champlain under 
General Montgomery, took Montreal and laid siege to Quebec, where 
it was soon joined by a second division of eleven hundred ^j^^ gxpedi- 
men under Colonel Benedict Arnold, which had made its tion against 
way to the north through the forests of Maine. After ^"^ ^' 
a combined assault on the stronghold of Quebec on the last day of 
the year, in which Montgomery was killed and Arnold wounded, the 
undertaking was abandoned. 

Washington did not accompany the expeditions to Canada, but 
settled down to the siege of Boston. His task was a difficult one. 
The minutemen, who had fought at Concord and Lexing- The siege of 
ton and at Bunker Hill, had enlisted but for short terms, so Boston. 
that before the winter was over an entirely new army had to be mus- 
tered. "It is not in the page of history perhaps," Washington wrote, 
" to furnish a case like ours: to maintain a post within musket-shot of 
the enemy for six months together without powder, and at the same 
time to disband one army and recruit another within that distance of 
twenty odd British regiments." In February, 1776, after the siege had 
been maintained for almost a year, the commander wrote, "My situa- 
tion has been such that I have been obliged to conceal it from my 
officers." In one month more the powder and cannon taken at Ticon- 
deroga and Crown Point arrived and all was changed. Awaking one 
morning the British were surprised to see siege guns on Dorchester 
Heights, which overlooked Boston from the south, and knew that they 
must abandon the city or be destroyed. On the seventeenth of March, 
1776, they sailed for Halifax, leaving more than two hundred cannon 
to the Americans, and large quantities of powder and ball. 

Both General Gage, and General Howe who succeeded him in 
command of the British before the city was evacuated, were severely 
criticized for their "negligence" and "delay" during the criticism of 
previous winter, when the weak American lines might have the British 
been broken through at almost any time. The spirit of s®'^®''^^^- 
enterprise and daring which had characterized every branch of the 
military service while Pitt and the Whigs were at the helm in Eng- 
land during the French and Indian War, seemed now conspicuously 
lacking in the British camps. 

Lord Dunmore, the governor of Virginia, made an effort to maintain 
the British authority in his colony. Though forced to flee from the 
mainland, he harassed the coast in vessels manned by 
loyaHsts and slaves; he threatened the colony with the spirit^n^the 
horrors of a servile insurrection by proclaiming freedom South. Raids 

in V irGnnifl 

to the slaves if they would join his cause, and he roused 



132 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

the indignation of the Virginians to the highest pitch by burning the 
town of Norfolk. He was forced to desist at last in the summer of 
1776. 

At the request of the loyalist governor of South Carolina, who 
desired the presence of British regulars to encourage the loyal senti- 
Repulse of ment in that colony, a British squadron under Clinton, 
the British CornwalHs, and Parker attempted to seize Charleston, 

fit Cn3.rlGS— 

ton, South the largest and richest city of the South. A small band 
Carolina. ^f patriot defenders at the fort on Sullivan's Island off 

Charleston repulsed the attack; and in honor of its brave defender. 
Colonel Moultrie, the fort has since been known as Fort Moultrie. 
For the next three years the British made no new attempt to establish 
themselves in the South. 

THE LOYALISTS 

The wisdom of the Quebec Act, so far as winning the allegiance of 
that colony to Great Britain was concerned, was now apparent, for 
Four loyal under its liberal provisions the French Canadians of Que- 
colonies on bec, in the full enjoyment of their own laws, customs, 
e mai an . ^^^ religion, remained loyal to their new rulers. Union 
with the Protestants of New England, with whom they had little in 
common either in customs or in creed, had no attractions for them. 
Nova Scotia, the other French-speaking colony of Great Britain,, 
likewise remained outside the Revolution, as did Great Britain's two; 
new colonies in the south. East Florida and West Florida, which were: 
Spanish in origin and civilization. 

The Americans of the British West Indies, though generally English 
in origin, also refrained from attaching themselves to the revolutionary 

cause. They differed from the revolting mainland colonies 
colonies in in Several important respects. Easy of access by water, 
the West ^j^^ surrounded by French islands from the beginning, 

they had early learned to look for defense to the navy ofj 
the mother country. Moreover they were not self-supporting from 
the industrial point of view, but found it profitable to devote then 
energies to raising a few staple products, which found a natura 
market in Great Britain, and to depend on that country and th< 
continental colonies for most of their supplies. Furthermore, becaust 
of the discomforts and dangers of the tropical climate, many of th 
more substantial islanders, whose extensive property interests gav 
them large influence on public opinion in the islands, resided for 
large part of the year in London, where they acquired the Britis 
point of view. It had been in the interests of these planters that th 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 133 

fatal tariff policy in regard to sugar and molasses had been adopted 
by the British statesmen. As a result, therefore, of the strong com- 
munity of interests with the mother country, the revolutionary spirit 
of the mainland made no headway in the islands. It was strictly con- 
tinentals who were in rebellion. 

Even in the revolting colonies the spirit of rebellion did not reflect 
the unanimous sentiment of the people. New York, Pennsylvania, 
and North Carolina were about evenly divided between 
the Loyalists, who took the British side of the dispute, in the revoit- 

and the Patriots, who supported rebellion. The Loyalists ^"^f mainland 

rr^ . r r 1 colonies, 

were sometimes called Tories from the name of the party 

in Great Britain which stood for the King's policy. In Georgia and 
South Carolina, where because of the planting interests there was to a 
large extent the same point of view as in the island colonies, the Loyal- 
ists were the more numerous body, but in the remaining eight colonies 
the Patriots predominated. John Adams estimated that one-third of 
the whole population of the thirteen colonies and more than one-third 
of the leading inhabitants were opposed to the Revolution. 

DEFIANCE OF GREAT BRITAIN ON THE WESTERN FRONTIe'r 

The agitation in New England over the tariff, the stamp tax, and 
the presence of the British regulars, culminating in the spirit of war 
which had traveled like wildfire from one end of the long -p. g .^. , 
line of seaboard colonies to the other, was coincident with proclamation 
a movement farther west of a different nature but exem- ° 
plifying the same spirit of independence. In the French and Indian 
War it had been possible for the British to rally the Americans against 
the French, because it was apparent that a victory for the French 
would inevitably result in shutting the Americans of the coast away 
from the coveted interior. Scarcely had the issue been decided against 
the French when the British King himself, in the Proclamation of 1763, 
did the very thing which had been feared from the enemy. In this 
proclamation King George III forbade his American subjects on the 
seaboard, although possessed of claims reaching to the Pacific under 
their sea-to-sea charters, to extend their boundaries beyond the moun- 
tains or to enter that territory which they had spilled their blood to 
win from the French. The interior of the country from Canada to the 
Gulf was reserved to the Indians. 

The real object of the proclamation was as much to check the expan- 
sion of the colonies and render them more easy of British control, as 
it was to safeguard the welfare of the Indians and reconcile them to 



134 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 



their new masters; but it availed nothing. The frontiersmen would 
not brook the unjust restrictions, and the southern part of the forbidden 
The rising land slowly slipped away from the British by "manifest 
tol7rontien* destiny," that is, by a natural working of forces that 
Tennessee. could not be checked. In the "back country" of Penn- 
sylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas, the natural highways led to the 
southwest, and down these valleys and mountain passes, and over the 
Cumberland Mountains, by way of the Cumberland Gap, sturdy 
pioneers from the colonies, reenforced by the Scotch-Irish newcomers 
from Europe, in defiance of the King of Great Britain, took up their 
march to the third frontier. The Watauga River in the mountains of 
western North Carolina was reached by a small company under the 
leadership of John Sevier and James Robertson in 1769, and a number 
of settlements were established, which soon overflowed into what is 
now the state of Tennessee. 

A forward movement under Daniel Boone pushed into the central 
part of what is now Kentucky, and delivered that region from the 
savages by a decisive 



The begin- 
nings of 
Kentucky. 



victory over the 

Indian chief Cornstalk 
and his followers on the Kanawha 
River in 1774. The first town in 
Kentucky was named Lexington 
by the pioneers, in celebration of 
the battle of Concord and Lexing- 
ton, news of which reached them 
as they were making their settle- 
ment. Tennessee was rid of the 
Indians by a decisive conflict on 
the Watauga two years later. 

After the land had been cleared 
of the savages and more settlers 
had pushed into the country, the 
The instinct inevitable instinct of 
of seif-gov- the frontier for self- 
ernment. , ,1 

government asserted 

itself, and the settlers both of Ken- 
tucky and of Tennessee came to- 
gether in their respective centers 
without permission of King, Par- 
liament, or governor, elected their own ofiicials, and made their own! 
laws, while they were still nominally within the jurisdiction of Virginia i 




Daniel Boone 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 135 

and North Carolina respectively. The southern part of this third and 
newest frontier was thus in open defiance of the mother country when 
the first shots of the Revolution were fired in Massachusetts. 



THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

In the midst of these stirring times on seaboard and inland frontier, 
the Second Continental Congress met at the call of the First Continental 
Congress, in Philadelphia, on the tenth of May, 1775, the -pj^^ second 
day of the capture of Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and Continental 
continued its sessions, as the only national government of ongJ'^ss. 
the colonies, throughout almost the entire war. Among the new mem- 
bers, who had not been present in the First Congress of 1774, were 
John Jay of New York, Benjamin Franklin of Pennsylvania, and 
Thomas Jefiferson of Virginia. The Second Congress, like the first, 
was appointed and controlled by the revolutionary assemblies, conven- 
tions, and committees, and was dependent upon public opinion for 
sanction of its acts. As the only authorized agent of the united 
colonies, from military necessity it exercised powers for which there 
was no legal warrant. It reenacted the Association of the First 
Continental Congress; authorized ten companies of "expert riflemen" 
to be raised in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and ordered them 
to "march" and "join the army near Boston"; made rules for the 
government of the Revolutionary Army; ordered the expedition to 
Canada; issued paper money to the soldiers; set up a post office; 
appointed Washington and other officers to their positions in the army; 
sent off to the King the loyal "olive branch" petition from the pen of 
John Dickinson; and within three weeks after Bunker Hill, issued to 
the world a declaration of the causes and necessity of taking up arms, 
also written by John Dickinson. 

As early as July 21, 1775, the Congress began the consideration of a 
formal plan of union, proposed by Benjamin Franklin, who had also 
been the author of the Albany plan of union, to take the ^j^^ ^^^ 
place of its irregular and informal mode of organization, national 
In the press of matters requiring immediate attention, g*'^^'''"^^^*- 
nothing was done until June, 1776, when a committee was appointed 
to draw up another plan. After long debate the final draft of the 
report of this committee, written by John Dickinson, was adopted 
in November, 1777, and sent to the states for ratification. Not until 
March, 1781, did Maryland, the last state, give its sanction to these 
Articles of Confederation, and not till then did they go into operation. 
This was within six months of the close of hostilities. Throughout 



136 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 



• 



practically the whole struggle, therefore, Congress was without formal 
and legal basis for the exercise of its powers. 

Even before the adoption of the Articles of Confederation for the 
national government, Congress advised the various colonies making 
The new ^P ^^^ ^^^ United States, to organize their individual 

state gov- state governments. British authority in the colonies 
ernmen s. ^^^ ceased simply because of the absence of British 
soldiers and the withdrawal of the loyal governors before the rising 
storm. The resistance of Governor Dunmore in Virginia was excep- 
tional. Congress realized the need of regularly constituted author- 
ity in each colony, and recommended in May, 1776, "the respective 
assemblies and conventions of the United States, when no govern- 
ment sufficient to the exigencies of their affairs hath been hitherto estab- 
lished, to adopt such a government as shall in the opinion of the repre- 
sentatives of the people best conduce to the happiness and safety of 
their constituents in particular and of America in general." 

Suddenly called upon in the crisis to assume the reins of their own 

government, the colonies displayed a conservatism that was admirable. 

Two of the states, the corporate colonies of Rhode Island 

the new and Connecticut, found it sufficient merely to continue 

state gov- their colonial charters as constitutions, substituting the 
emments. .^ ^^ ' ° 

word people "for King." All the new state constitutions 

continued the colonial governor and legislature; and the latter body 
in almost every instance was made to consist of two houses, with the 
balance of power as formerly inclining to it rather than to the governor. 
In some states the governor was made dependent on the law-making 
branch for his appointment, in others he was to be elected by the 
people; in some he was not allowed to veto legislative enactments, in 
others he might exercise this power. The judges of the state courts 
were to be appointed by the legislatures, and were to hold their office 
during good behavior. The right to vote was quite generally restricted 
to the property-holding classes, and in some states to those possessing 
certain religious qualifications. Only from one-sixth to one-fiftieth of 
the population were allowed to exercise the right of suffrage, and this 
on the eve of the Declaration of Independence which was to proclaim 
that all men were created equal. Almost every state constitution con- 
tained a bill of rights, setting forth definitely "the rights of English- 
men," for which the colonists had always contended. None of the 
states submitted their new constitutions to the people for ratification, 
and in the election of delegates to the conventions that framed the 
constitutions, "the enemies of the liberties of America," the Loyalists, 
were generally not allowed to vote. 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 137 

Upon receipt of the conciliatory addresses of the First Continental 
Congress in the early days of 1775, the House of Commons in London 
was the scene of a brilliant debate, in which William Pitt, jj^^ failure 
now the Earl of Chatham, Edmund Burke, and other of the con- 
Whigs mercilessly attacked the policy of the King and tltude^oi^ ~ 

his ministers, and brought forward various schemes of Great 

r^i T^ • Tir- • T 1 TVT 1 Britain, 

reconciliation. The Prime Minister, Lord North, sur- 
prised his opponents by proposing to exempt from further taxation for 
the purposes of revenue any colony which of its own accord would 
contribute to the common defense of the empire and make a fixed 
appropriation to pay the salaries of its governor and judges. This 
measure passed both houses of Parliament, but how little it really meant 
may be judged from the attitude of Benjamin Franklin, the agent of 
Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in London, who left England for 
home, convinced that war was inevitable. 

In three months more the Second Continental Congress dispatched 
the last petition of the colonies, intrusting its delivery to Richard 
Penn, a descendant of the founder of Pennsylvania, and ^j^^ gj-i^ish 
for a reply received the royal proclamation that they proclamation 
were in rebellion. In that three months blood had been 
shed profusely in New England in open warfare, so that the proclama- 
tion would seem to have justification, though no war had been declared 
on either side. "The colonies . . . have at length proceeded to 
open and avowed rebellion, by arraying themselves in a hostile man- 
ner, to withstand the execution of the law, and traitorously preparing, 
ordering and levying war against us," ran the document; and all the 
king's officers and all the king's men were commanded "to suppress 
such rebellion, and to bring the traitors to justice ... in order to 
bring to condign punishment the authors, perpetrators, and abettors 
of such traitorous designs." Parliament and the King proceeded to 
emphasize their warlike attitude toward the colonies by an act pro- 
hibiting all trade and intercourse with America. 

The King despaired of his ability to recruit a sufficient number of 
his own subjects to serve in the unpopular war against his colonies, and 
sent to Russia to hire soldiers there; but the Empress The German 
Catherine refused the request. King George next applied mercenaries, 
to the princes of some of the small German states, from whom he 
secured about thirty thousand men, later popularly known in America 
as Hessians, because most of them hailed from the little state of Hesse- 
Cassel. The news of the rejection of the petition of the Second Con- 
tinental Congress, of the issuance of the King's proclamation, and of 
the hiring of the mercenaries reached America at about the same 



138 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

time. "Well, brother rebel," said a Southerner to a fellow-member 
of Congress, "we have now got a sufficient answer to our peti- 
tion; I want nothing more, but am ready to declare ourselves inde- 
pendent." 

As a result of the fighting that had already taken place, of the 
assumption of national powers by the Continental Congress, of the 

revolutionary formation of new state governments that 
Paine's had already begun, and of the implacable and exasper- 

'• Common ating attitude of the mother country, the tide of public 

opinion was setting in fast in favor of independence. 
Thomas Paine, "a newly arrived Englishman," issued in January, 
1776, one of the most important pamphlets in the nation's history, 
entitled " Common Sense." This was a stirring call for independence, 
professing to apply common sense to the undoubted difficulties of 
the situation. "The present state of America is truly alarming to 
every man who is capable of reflection. Without law, without govern- 
ment, without any other mode of power than what is founded on and 
granted by courtesy, . . . independence is the only bond that can tie 
and keep us together. We shall then see our object, and our ears will 
be legally shut against the wishes of an intriguing as well as a cruel 
enemy. We shall then be on a proper footing to treat with Britain; 
for there is reason to conclude, that the pride of that court will be less 
hurt by treating with the American states for terms of peace, than with 
those she denominates 'rebellious subjects,' for terms of accommoda- 
tion. It is our delaying that encourages her to hope for conquest, 
and our backwardness tends only to prolong the war." One hundred 
thousand copies of this pamphlet were sold, and Washington spoke 
of it as "working a wonderful change (in Virginia) in the minds 
of men." 

The Americans, who opposed the writs of assistance, the stamp 
tax, the Townshend Acts, and the "Intolerable Acts of 1774," were 

avowedly loyal subjects of King George III. They were 
of the desire opposing the government of the day, to be sure, but not 
for independ- j^j^g sovereignty of the British Empire. The Stamp Act 

Congress, too, and the First Continental Congress, were 
loyal bodies. The first general movement toward open rebellion came 
a full year after Concord and Lexington. Only then did the statesmen 
of the Congress at Philadelphia finally commit the colonies to inde- 
pendence; and their action was accepted as the one possible step for 
lovers of liberty. 

On the seventh of June, 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia moved 
in Congress, " that these United States are, and of right ought to be, free 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 



139 



The passage 
of the Decla- 
ration of In- 
dependence. 



and independent states, that they are absolved from all allegiance 
to the British crown, and that all political connection between them 
and the state of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally 
dissolved." The vote on the motion was postponed till 
the first of July, that time might be gained for winning 
over certain waverers; and meantime a committee, con- 
sisting of Thomas 
Jefferson, Benja- 
min Franklin, 
John Adams, Ro- 
ger Sherman, and 
Robert Living- 
ston, was ap- 
pointed to draw 
up a declaration 
to be reported and 
voted on, in case 
the resolution in 
question should be 
passed. Jefferson, 
then thirty-two 
years of age, pro- 
ceeded to compose 
the document, 
which later was 
somewhat modi- 
fied by Franklin 
and Adams. On 
the first of July, 
Lee's resolution 
was taken up and 
on the next day 
passed. On the 
fourth of July 
Jefferson's declara- 
tion was adopted, 
and was later signed by fifty-five members of the Congress. 

"When in the Course of human events," ran the document, one of 
the greatest in history, "it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve 
the political bands which have connected them with ^j^^ wording 
another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, of the ^ 
the separate and equal station to which the Laws of nature 




Independence' Hall, Phlladelphl^ 
Where the Declaration of Independence was adopted. 



I40 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of 
mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel 
them to the separation. 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created 
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable 
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happi- 
ness. That to secure these rights. Governments are instituted among 
Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. 
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these 
ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to insti- 
tute new Government, laying its foundations on such principles and 
organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely 
to affect their Safety and Happiness." A long catalogue follows of the 
abuses suffered at the hands of the King, to prove that Great Britain 
had "failed to secure these rights." "We, therefore, the Representa- 
tives of the United States of America, in General Congress Assembled, 
appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our 
intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People 
of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare. That these United 
Colonies are, and of right ought to be Free and Independent States; 
. . . And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm rehance on 
the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other 
our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor." 

These ideas of the rights of man and the obligations of government 
were not new with Jefferson. The English writers, Richard Hooker, 
Origin of the John Milton, Thomas Hobbes, and John Locke, and the 
ideas of the French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and many 
on the rights Others, had expressed similar sentiments, which Jefferson 
of man. j^^^^ doubtless read. Jefferson's own contemporaries, 

Samuel Adams and James Otis in Massachusetts, had often spoken 
and written in the same vein. The greatness of the Declaration 
of Independence lies not in its originality, therefore, but, first, in 
the fact that it states the theories of popular government in 
simple English that will endure, and, second, in the fact that its 
author spoke not merely as the student of political theory, but as the 
exponent of the spirit of America, the spirit of self-government as it 
had been worked out in a hundred and fifty years of frontier struggle. 

The independence of the British colonies had been prophesied by 
acute observers. In 1730 the Frenchman, Montesquieu, expressed 
Prophecies ^^^ belief that Great Britain would some day lose her 
of independ- colonies. In 1748 the Swedish traveler, Peter Kalm, 
^'^"' wrote: "I have been told by Englishmen, and not only by 



THE RISE OF POLITICAL DISCONTENT 141 

such as were born in America, but even by such as came from Europe, 
that the English colonies in North America, in the space of thirty or 
fifty years, would be able to form a state by themselves, entirely 
independent of Old England." The French statesman, Turgot, once 
compared colonies to fruit which remains on the stem until it is ripe, 
and after the peace of Paris in 1763 another French statesman wrote: 
"England will soon repent of having removed the only check that 
could keep her colonies in awe. They stand no longer in need of her 
protection. She will call on them to contribute toward the burdens 
they have helped bring on her, and they will answer by striking off all 
dependence." 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Channing, United States, III; G. E. llovfARD, Preliminaries of Revolution; Lecky, 
American Revolution; Trevelyan, American Revolution; G. L. Beer, British Colonial 
Policy, 1 754-1 765; Fisher, American Independence; Fiske, American Revolution,' 
Tyler, American Revolution; Roosevelt, Winning of the West; Van Tyne, American- 
Revolution. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Boston Massacre. Contemporaries, II, 429-431; Harding, Orations, 
11-24. 

2. The Boston Tea Party. Epochs, III, 93-103; Contemporaries, II, 431-433; 
Tyler, American Revolution, I, 246-266; Avery, United States, V, 154-171; Source 
Book, 137. 

3. The Battle of Bunker Hill. C. F. Adams, Studies, 1-21; Avery, United 
States, V, 257-274.* 

4. The Watauga Settlement. Roosevelt, Winning of the West, 1, 166-193; 
Bruce, Daniel Boone, 76-83, and 247-280. 

5. Daniel Boone and Early Kentucky. Roosevelt, Winning of the West, 
I, 244-271; Bruce, Daniel Boone, and American Expansion, 1-23; Thwaites, Daniel 
Boone; Sparks, Expansion, 88-103. 

6. The Declaration of Independence. Old South Leaflets, IV, 3; Epochs, III, 
132-142; Contemporaries, II, 537-439; H. Friedenwald, Declaration of Iiuiependence; 
J. H. Hazelton, Declaration of Indcpendoice; Tyler, American Revolution, I, 494-518; 
H. W. Elson, Side Lights, 3-24; Avery, United States, V, 370-400; Source Book, 
147-149. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

Holmes, Ballad of Boston Tea Party, and Grandmother'' s Story of Bunker Hill Battle; 
Lanier, Lexington; Emerson, Concord Hytrin; Longfellow, Paul Revcre's Ride; 
Lowell, Concord Ode, and Ode for the Fourth of July, lyjd; Bryant, Green Mountain. 
Boys; Thompson, Green Mountain Boys; Hawthorne, Grandfather's Chair, Part HI; 
Howe's Masquerade in Twice Told Tales, and Septimius Felton; Cooper, Lionel Lincoln.. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Give the arguments for and against the stamp tax. What had there been in George 
Washington's civil and mihtary career before 1775 to fit him for leadership during the 
Revolution? Explain the leading charges against Great Britain enumerated in the 



142 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

Declaration of Independence. What more remote causes of the Revolution cart you 
give? How did the attitude of the Stamp Act Congress toward Great Britain differ 
from that of the Second Continental Congress? Explain this difference. Did the 
British Parliament have the right to pass the Intolerable Acts of 1774? On what 
grounds did the i\mericans object to them? Would the Americans have been satisfied 
with taxation with representation? Is the Union older than the states? Why did 
Great Britain change its policy toward the colonies after 1763? In what respects 
was the colonial policy of Great Britain in America in the seventeenth century similar 
to that of France, and in what respects was it different? What changes were there 
in the two policies in the eighteenth century? 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 

THE CAMPAIGNS AROUND NEW YORK 

After his success in delivering the capital of Massachusetts, Wash- 
ington transferred his army to the vicinity of New York City, in an 

effort to render that stronghold secure from the enemy. „, . . 

TV 3. shin ff" 
It was while he was in New York that he made the an- ton's defeat 

nouncement to his army of the Declaration of Indepen- 9^ ^°^^ 
dence, which the soldiers and citizens celebrated by tearing 
down the leaden statue of George III on Bowling Green and melting 
it into bullets. He proceeded to fortify a position on Long Island, over- 
looking New York. The British fleet under Lord Howe and the 
British army under General Howe, who had brought his forces back 
from Halifax, were arrayed against him in overwhelming numbers. 
Like Prescott at Bunker Hill, Washington suffered defeat at Brooklyn 
Heights, the first engagement of the New York campaign, but, like him, 
succeeded in drawing off his army in safety, first to Manhattan Island 
and then north into the country beyond. Before abandoning New 
York the American commander seriously considered burning the city, 
in order to prevent the enemy from enjoying any advantage in its 
possession, but the plan was not carried out; and to the end of the war 
New York remained in the hands of the British. General Howe was 
severely criticized for allowing Washington to escape him here, for 
with, the superior British forces he should have been able to command 
both the land and the water routes of the American retreat. The 
country north of New York, including Forts Washington and Lee on 
the Hudson, fell into the hands of the British as far as West Point, 
but this key to the Valley of the Hudson the Americans succeeded in 
retaining. 

Retreating up the east side of the Hudson to a point just beyond 
White Plains and then across the river, the American commander, un- 
able to risk a battle, turned southward to New Jersey and ^j^^ retreat 
crossed the Delaware into Pennsylvania. The courage of from New 
the patriots was at low ebb. The militia were abandoning °^ ' 
Washington because their terms of service were at an end, and his losses 

143 



144 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 



around New York had reduced the troops at his command to a few 
thousand. The British issued a pardon to all who would submit, and 
several thousand accepted it. One 
of the American generals, Charles 
Lee, who had fallen into the hands 
of the British, had traitorously- 
given them all the information he 
could concerning the plans of the 
Americans. 

In the last days of 1776 Wash- 
ington performed two remarkable 
Victory at f eats with the few 
Trenton troops at his com- 

mand. On Christmas night, when 
the thermometer was at zero, and 




shore, 
his men 



the snow was falling fast, 
wisely conjecturing that the 
British army of German mer- 
cenaries at Trenton would be 
sleeping soundly after a day 
of revelry and drinking, he em- 
barked a detachment of two 
thousand five hundred men in 
rowboats on the Delaware 
and made for the Trenton 
The current was swift, the ice cakes threatening, but he got 
across and fought a short and decisive conflict of less than 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 145 

an hour. After a score of their men had been slain, the entire body 
of one thousand Hessians surrendered. The patriot loss was two killed 
in battle, two frozen to death, and a few injured. 

Now came the British general Cornwallis upon the scene to turn the 
tables. "At last we have run down the old fox and will bag him in 
the morning," said he, and sent his army to sleep for a and at 
much-needed rest. While the British slept, " the old fox " Princeton. 
slipped away under cover of darkness, leaving behind him burning 
camp-fires to deceive the enemy, and won a victory over a strong 
British force at Princeton, a few miles away. As the news of these 
achievements spread over the country the fainting patriot heart took 
new courage. 

The rest of the winter of 1 776-1 777 Washington spent with his army 

undisturbed at Morristown Heights, west of New York, near enough 

to disturb the British line of communications, if the latter The winter 

should make a sudden move on Philadelphia. It was a S^™p.\^ 

. . . ^ . Morristown 

dark period for the Americans. Washington reorganized Heights, 

his dwindling army and pledged his own private fortune to 1776-1777. 
sustain his men. Other generals did the same, while Robert Morris, 
a merchant of Philadelphia, raised a subscription of fifty thousand 
dollars in cash, which he placed at the disposal of the commander-in- 
chief. "These are the times that try men's souls," wrote Thomas 
Paine, author of "Common Sense," in the first of a series of pamphlets 
called the "Crisis," which he issued from time to time during the war. 
" The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in the crisis, shrink 
from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the 
love and thanks of man and woman." 

THE PHILADELPHIA AND SAR.'VTOGA CAMPAIGNS 

In the spring of 1777 General Howe set out by water from New 
York for Chesapeake Bay to attempt the capture of Philadelphia 
from the south. Washington opposed him at the Brandy- ^j^^ British 
wine River in southeastern Pennsylvania, and at Ger- capture of 
mantown, a suburb of Philadelphia, but could not prevent a e p a. 

him from occupying the city, then the capital of the new United States. 

In northern New York the British were not so successful as around 
New York and Philadelphia. In accordance with a plan of campaign 
conceived in London, Colonel St. Leger with a force of p • • 1, 

two thousand men was to march east from Lake Ontario plan of cam- 
through the valley of the Mohawk River in the state of ^^^^^^ *^® 
New York. General Burgoyne at the head of nine thousand 
men was to come south from Canada by way of Lake Champlain, and 



146 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 



General Howe was to move north from New York City with eighteen 
thousand men, the three columns to converge toward a point somewhere 
in the vicinity of Albany. The design was to gain possession of the 
Valley of the Hudson 
River and divide the re- 
bellious colonies into two 
sections, with defiant 
New England cut off 
from the regions that 
were less united in their 
resistance. 

St. Leger, who had 




his command British regulars, Tories from central New York, and 
The failure Iroquois Indians, was repulsed by Herkimer in the bloody 
of the battle of Oriskany at the headwaters of the Mohawk, 

^^°" and in August, 1777, was finally turned back at Fort 

Stanwix by Herkimer and Arnold. Howe failed to receive his orders 
in proper time and went off to the capture of Philadelphia, where he 
was kept busy throughout the summer by the maneuvering of Wash- 
ington and prevented from joining Burgoyne after the orders for that 
movement finally reached him. Burgoyne was left to operate alone 
against the northern army of the Americans, which had retreated from 
Canada after their failure to take Quebec and was now under the 
command of General Schuyler in the vicinity of Lake Champlain. 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 



147 



After falling back from Canada in the early months of 1776 Schuyler's 
army had lost Crown Point, and now in 1777, before the oncoming of 

Burgoyne, was forced to give up Ticon- 
deroga as well as Fort Edward on the 
Hudson. The way seemed to be open- 
ing to the invaders. Burgoyne, how- 
ever, like St. Leger, employed savages, 
whose cruelty aroused the anger of the 
inhabitants of the surrounding country- 
side and contributed greatly to his final 
undoing. Trees were felled in his path 
by the zealous patriots, roads and 
bridges destroyed, and his supplies cut 
off. 

In desperation Burgoyne sent a force 
of German mercenaries and Indians to 
overpower the citizen-sol- ^j^^ nj^^^ie 
diers at Bennington, Ver- of Benning- 
mont, and capture their *°°' 
stores; but the expedition was met and 
utterly put to rout by hastily gathered 
volunteers under Colonel Stark. Two 
hundred of the thousand Germans en- 
gaged were killed or wounded and seven 
hundred captured. 

Cut off from reenforcements from St. 
Leger and Howe and weakened at Ben- 
nington, the situation of Burgoyne be- 
came critical. Schuyler, who planned 
the campaign against him, surrender of 
now fell a victim to the Burgoyne at 
jealousy of certain mem- ^^atoga. 
bers of Congress and was superseded by 
the inefiicient General Gates on the very 
eve of victory. The Americans met the 
desperate British in two engagements on 
the Hudson near Lake Saratoga, the 
first of which proved indecisive and the 
second a complete victory for the Ameri- 
cans, a victory which was largely due to 
General Benedict Arnold's superb leadership. On October 17, 1777, 
Burgoyne surrendered his entire force of six thousand men. 




SCALE OF M.'LES 



Bukgoynte's Campaign 



148 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

The victory of Saratoga has been recognized as one of the "decisive 
battles of the world." The French, since their humiliating losses in 
Timely aid the French and Indian War, had been burning for re- 
from France, venge on the British, and were now pleased to see the 
apparent breaking up of the American empire of their rivals. The 
achievements of Herkimer, Arnold, Schuyler, and Gates and their 
final victory aroused great enthusiasm in Paris. France concluded a 
treaty of amity and commerce and another of alliance with the strug- 
gling states, which she recognized as a free and independent nation. 
The timely intervention proved the turning point of the war for the 
United States, for it not only greatly encouraged the new nation, but 
also secured to them supplies of French guns, ammunition, and clothing, 
and ultimately the assistance of the French army and navy. The 
success of the negotiations leading up to the French-American 
treaties was due largely to Benjamin Franklin, one of the three American 
representatives in Paris at the time. 

The Frenchman, Marquis de Lafayette, not yet twenty years of 
age, had enlisted as a volunteer under Washington without pay before 
Various for- the treaties were concluded; and like him came the Ger- 
eign soldiers, mans De Kalb and Von Steuben and the two Polish nobles, 
Kosciusko and Pulaski, soldiers of fortune in defense of liberty, who 
proved of great service in organizing and drilling the new' American 
recruits. 

Spain and Holland soon joined France in a coalition against their 
old rival, so that Great Britain found three European powers arrayed 
The war in against her in Europe, at the very moment she was fighting 
Europe. [^ America to retain her colonial possessions. 

The full significance of the surrender at Saratoga and of the French- 
American alliance was not lost on the Parliament of Great Britain. 
Lord North, whose compromise measures of 1775 had 
the'^ritish° failed signally, was still the Prime Minister. Under his 
offer of leadership the Coercive Acts of 1774 were repealed, the 

tax on tea abandoned, and the right to tax the colonies 
renounced. The Taxation of the Colonies Act of 1778, which still 
governs Great Britain's relations with her colonies in this matter, pro- 
vided that Parliament "will not impose any duty, tax or assessment 
whatever, payable in any of His Majesty's colonies, provinces and 
plantations in North America or the West Indies; except only such 
duties as it may be expedient to impose for the regulation of commerce; 
the net produce of such duties to be always paid and applied to and for 
the use of the colony, province, or plantation, in which the same shall 
be respectively levied, in such manner as other duties collected by 



I50 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

the authority of the respective general courts, or general assemblies, of 
such colonies, provinces or plantations, are ordinarily paid and applied." 
Three commissioners crossed the Atlantic on a mission of peace to offer 
these concessions and to give assurance that Great Britain would 
never again send troops to America without the consent of the local 
assemblies, and that America might send representatives to the British 
Parliament. Practically all the original contentions of the colonies 
were granted, but independence was the only condition under which 
the Americans would now lay down their arms, and the mission ended 
in failure. 

Before the French supplies arrived, Washington and his men passed 
the winter of 1 777-1 778 at Valley Forge, on the Schuylkill River, 
twenty-four miles above Philadelphia, in great suffering, 
camp at without proper food and without shoes and blankets. 

1^7-1778^^' Washington said of the sufferings of his men at this time 
that "their marches might be traced by the blood from 
their feet." At least three thousand Americans deserted to the com- 
fortable British quarters in Philadelphia, where the enemy were passing 
a winter of ease and gaiety. 

In the midst of the general depression occurred a miserable plot, 
known as Conway's Cabal, among certain generals and members of 
Conway's the Continental Congress, to displace Washington as 

Cabal. commander-in-chief. Fortunately the plot failed and 

left the commander stronger than ever in the esteem of his country. 

A most discouraging feature in this crisis of the war was the state 

of the national finances. Money in the colonies had always been in a 

confused state; English money was most commonly used, 
Thediscour- , ^ r' i, ^ • • • i ^• 

aging state of but money of other countries was m circulation, par- 

the national ticularly the Spanish dollar. When the Continental 

Congress faced the financial problem, it met with almost 

insuperable difficulties. The currency issued and in general use during 

the war consisted of Congress's promises to pay, printed on paper but 

unsecured by gold back of them. Very poor money it proved to be, 

for its value changed from day to day according to the amount of 

confidence felt by the people in the ability of Congress ever to make 

good its promises. Measured in gold, a dollar's worth of the paper 

money might become worth only a few cents if the people felt that 

the credit of Congress was poor; and on the other hand, when more 

confidence was felt in the ability of Congress to meet its obligations, 

the value of the notes rose. The states, too, issued such money, and 

it has been estimated that the total face value of the notes put into 

circulation by Congress and the states together during the Revolution- 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 



151 



ary War reached $450,000,000. Concerning their depreciation Wash- 
ington sadly declared that it took a wagonload of money to buy a load 
of provisions. A barber in Philadelphia papered his shop with the 
bills to show his contempt for them. 

PafiXu ui te^GiiT fi m u nxET' Kq^?] 



nxtif 

OTcT Bill entitles 
Bearer to recei'ue 
ISixtySpanifh mill- 
ed Dollars, or 
^fe Value f&reof in 
lGoIdi7rSilvei:, a.c~ 
hcarding ta a Rcibiu- 
Ition ta^ed % ^on- 

\Scl^,^M, 1778. 









Continental AIunev 

Six months in Philadelphia convinced Clinton, who had succeeded 
Howe in command of the British, that the mere possession of the rebel 
capital did his cause little good, and learning that a The British 
French fleet under Count d'Estaing was crossing the Philadelphia 
ocean, he marched back to New York in the spring of to New 
1778, undisturbed by Washington save at the battle of 
Monmouth. Here the battle was lost to the Americans through 
the treasonable negligence and disobedience of Charles Lee, who 
was again in the American army by the exchange of prisoners, his 
treason having been undiscovered, and was in immediate command 
of the American forces engaged. Lee was tried by court martial, 
suspended from command, and later dismissed from the army in dis- 
grace. After Monmouth, to the end of the war, the only other im- 
portant battle in the northeast was the thrilling capture of Stony Point 
on the Hudson by General Anthony Wayne in 1779. This attack was 
ordered by Washington, in order to draw the British troops away 
from a marauding expedition into Connecticut. When Clinton and 
the British reached New York, Washington settled down on guard 



152 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

over the city and remained there three years, fighting no battles and 
givdng his army little to do beyond keeping a close watch on the in- 
trenched British. 

WAR IN VARIOUS QUARTERS 

While Washington's army was besieging New York, the Americans 
were not inactive elsewhere. Scarcely a week after Monmouth, the 
Indian out- beautiful Wyoming Valley in the northern part of Penn- 
rages in sylvania, which had been settled by New Englanders 

and^ew from Connecticut, was the scene of a terrible British- 

York. Indian massacre. The fourth of July, which came the 

day after the massacre, disclosed a scene such as the frontier had 
seldom witnessed, causing a shudder of sympathy from Maine to 
Georgia. Hundreds of settlers went to their death under the most 
exquisite torture that the Indian fiends could invent. The attacking 
party came out of New York State, where a few months later they fell 
upon more victims in Cherry Valley. 

Washington determined to put a stop to these outrages. In the 
summer of 1779 he sent an army of five thousand men under General 
General Sullivan to devastate the entire Iroquois country of 

Sullivan's western New York, and seldom have instructions been 
agafnsVthe more faithfully carried out. After a battle on the present 
Iroquois. gj^g Qf ^}^q ^ity of Elmira, the lands of the Indians were 

laid waste for miles around, their crops destroyed, forty of their vil- 
lages burned, and the inhabitants themselves put to flight. The 
Mohawks fled to the northern shores of Lake Erie in Canada; the 
lands of two other tribes were purchased by the state of New York, 
and their owners scattered to various parts of Canada and later to 
Michigan and even to Indian Territory; and remnants to this day 
still inhabit Indian reservations throughout central and western New 
York. Thus pass from the history of the United States the mighty 
Iroquois, who had been a tower of strength first to the Dutch and then 
to the British against all their enemies. Their loyalty to Great 
Britain remained to the end, but it does not redound to the credit of 
the mother country, that as she waged the struggle against the revolting 
colonies she called savages to her aid, knowing, from her experiences 
in the French and Indian Wars, the nature of the fighting to be expected 
from the Indians. The British claimed that the Americans also 
employed the Indians, but very few instances of this can be found. In 
almost every community the red men were hostile to the colonists. 

We have seen how the country south of the Ohio River gradually 
filled in with settlers in defiance of the Crown, and how the settlers 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 



153 



there organized their own independent governments. When the 
spirit of war seized these energetic Americans of the wilderness, like 
their brothers on the seaboard they turned their thoughts almost at 
once to the conquest of the adjoining British lands to the 
north. A leader arose in the person of George Rogers 
Clark, a pioneer of Kentucky, scarcely twenty years of 
age, who conceived the bold project of organizing a band 
and pushing into the country north of the Ohio, which the 
British had incorporated in the province of Quebec and had fortified 
at Cahokia, Kaskaskia, Vincennes, Detroit, and other points. Gov- 
ernor Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and other leaders in Virginia- 



George Rog- 
ers Clark's 
conquest of 
the country 
north of the 
Ohio River. 



.JK^^ 




Omo Flatboat with Superstructure of Rough Lumber 

Craft of this sort were used by families who intended to use the lumber for house 
building after reaching their destinations. 



which state had claims on the lands northwest of the Ohio, approved 
Clark's plan, and the legislature of Virginia voted him twelve hundred 
dollars, and full authority to enlist in the name of the state three hun- 
dred and fifty men for his enterprise. In boldness of conception and 
execution the expedition well reflected the spirit of the men of the 
West. Down the Monongahela to the Ohio the little band proceeded, 
down the Ohio to the Mississippi, and thence north on that river to 
Kaskaskia and Cahokia in the present state of Illinois, nowhere meet- 
ing resistance worthy of the name. To dispossess Colonel Hamilton, 
the British commander, who in haste had made a long march from 
Detroit to Vincennes on the Wabash, Clark and his men made their 
way in the dead of winter through water, snow, and ice, across the 
"drowned lands" of southern Illinois, and conquered the garrison 
at Vincennes. The first territorial expansion in the history of the 
United States had been accomplished. 



154 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 



of the 
conquest, 



On seven subsequent occasions the United States has extended its 
borders to include new territory, but none of these expansions has 
Importance surpassed the first either in importance or in romantic 
interest. By Clark's conquest, ratified later in the treaty 
of peace, the new nation took over land wrested by the 
British from the French in 1763. In view of their treaty of alliance 
with the French, it re- 
quired skillful diplomacy 
on the part of the Ameri- 
cans to preserve unim- 
paired friendship with 
their allies and at the 
same time prevent the 
latter from acquiring 
again their lost lands. 

In another part of the 
world, John Paul Jones, a 
John Paul young Scotch 
Jones, immigrant, 

founder of 1 1 • 

the United by his e X - 

States navy. ploits first 

brought the naval power 
of the United States to 
the attention of the world 
and made himself the 
father of the American 
navy. After ravaging the 
coast of Great Britain in 
the Bon Homme Richard, John Paul Jones 

and damaging her ocean 

commerce, he fought with the British vessel Serapis "one of the most 
obstinate and murderous struggles recorded in naval history," in 
which more than half those engaged were either killed or wounded. 
In the midst of the battle Jones ran his vessel close up to that of his 
antagonist in order that he might lash the two vessels together for 
close hand-to-hand fighting. "Have you struck your colors?" called 
out the British captain, and the reply came back, "I have not yet be- 
gun to fight." The Serapis surrendered, but the Bon Homme Richard, 
on fire and with six feet of water in her hold at the time of her victory, 
sank in a few hours. As the story of the encounter spread, it shed 
upon the little American navy a distinction like that attained by the 
army at Saratoga. 




THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 155 

By far the greatest damage done to the British on the sea was the 
work of privateers. A privateer is a vessel of war, privately owned, 
equipped, and manned, and authorized by the government The priva- 
to sail against the commerce of the enemy for the sake of t^^rs. 
booty. Hundreds of American privateers preyed upon the commerce 
of the British, and the British retaliated in kind. The special object 
of attack by the American boats was the rich British trade in the West 
Indies, which suffered terribly. It has been estimated that in the first 
year of the war the total damage inflicted on the enemy in this way 
amounted to £1,800,000. By the end of the second year, six hun- 
dred British and nine hundred American vessels had suffered capture, 
and by the close of the war the figure must have reached thousands on 
both sides. Fortunes were made by the successful privateers, while 
patriots on land were sickening and dying in the army. Had there 
been no such attractions on the sea, it would undoubtedly have been 
easier to enlist men in the army, yet the money flowing into the coun- 
try from the successful privateering ventures helped to furnish the 
sinews of war, and the privateers distinctly aided the American cause 
by inspiring in the British merchants a desire for peace. 

Not every vessel taken by privateers, was held. Many, with their 
cargoes, were released upon their captains' signing agreements to pay 
ransom money at the end of the war and giving hostages Customs of 
to guarantee the payment of the money. When the P"vateers. 
war was at an end, these agreements were impartially enforced by the 
courts of both nations. 

A gloomy incident in American history darkened the year 1780. 
As an accomplished and deserving officer, who had served his country 
well around Boston, in Canada, and in the Saratoga Benedict 
campaign, Benedict Arnold was one of the heroes of the Arnold, 
war. At Saratoga he was severely wounded, but in 
1778, upon recovery of his strength, he was placed by Washington in 
command of Philadelphia after the British abandoned that city for 
New York. The command was an important one, but it did not 
fully satisfy the ambition of Arnold, who, though he had been made a 
major general early in 1777, was piqued by the more rapid promotion 
of others. Charges of improper conduct at his new post, involving 
extravagance and possible corruption, were made against Arnold, for 
which he was tried by court martial, convicted, and reprimanded, as 
mildly as possible, by the commander-in-chief. The proud spirit of 
the soldier revolted at the disgrace, and already planning revenge, 
he sought and secured from Washington the command of the important 
post of West Point on the Hudson, with the treasonable intention of 



156 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 




John Andre 
Drawn by himself the night before his execution. 



surrendering it to the enemy. If this could be accomplished, the 
splitting of the territory of the Americans which Burgoyne had sought 
at Saratoga would be accomplished, and that which the patriot 
Arnold had then had a hand in preventing by his bravery would now 

be brought about by his 
treachery. Presently a 
young British officer, John 
Andre, came into the Ameri- 
can lines below West Point 
and with Arnold planned in 
secret the details of the pro- 
posed surrender. On his 
way back to the British 
lines, Andre was taken into 
custody near Tarrytown by 
three Americans, Paulding, 
Williams, and Van Wert, 
who found on his person 
papers which fully disclosed 
the plot. "Arnold is a trai- 
tor and has fled to the British! Whom can we trust now?" said 
Washington to his officers, with tears streaming down his cheeks, as 
he came riding into West Point a few hours later. 

Arnold made good his escape to the British, but Andre was 
hanged as a spy. Four years before, the British in New York 
The fate of had captured and hanged as a spy young Nathan Hale, 
Andre. whom Washington had sent within their lines to gather 

information. "I regret that I have but one life to give for my 
country," said he to a British officer shortly before his execution, 
while Andre's last words were a request that he be shot and 
not hanged. 

In the service of the British the revengeful Arnold led marauding 
expeditions against the coast of Virginia and against that of his native 
Arnold on State of Connecticut. After the war was over, with his 
the side of wife and family he took up his residence in London. His 
sons entered the British army, where they rendered dis- 
tinguished service. The story is told that Arnold, filled with remorse, 
called for his old uniform with its epaulets, as he was about to die, and 
put it on, saying, "Let me die in this old uniform in which I fought 
my battles. May God forgive me for putting on any other!" 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 



157 



THE SOUTHERN CAMPAIGNS, ENDING AT YORKTOWN 

After the failure of Burgoyne and the return of Clinton to New 
York, the British remained largely on the defensive in British in- 
the North, secure in the possession of New York City vasion in the 



and of the country north as far as West Point, 
offensive operations were di- 
rected against the states at the 
south, in the hope of penetrating 
the colonies there, summoning the 
Loyalists to their standard, and 
working northward. In 1778 they 
took Savannah and reinstated the 
royal governor in Georgia. In 
1780 they took Charleston, 
defended by General Lin- 
coln with three thousand 
Continentals, and over- 
ran the whole of 



Their 



South. 




state of South Carolina. At first the chief resistance came from small 
isolated bands of patriots fighting in guerrilla warfare under the com- 
manders, Pickens, Marion, and Sumter. Small reinforcements arrived 
from the North before the surrender of Charleston, and after that 
event came more northern troops and General Gates to succeed Gen- 
eral Lincoln in command. At Camden, in the central part of South 



158 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

Carolina, the new commander met with humiliating defeat and great 
losses at the hands of Cornwallis. 

Pushing on from this victory to the invasion of North Carolina, 
Cornwallis sent a division of one thousand Tories under Major Ferguson 
The battle ^° scour the highlands of the western part of the state for 
of King's more Tory recruits. The backwoodsmen there, however, 

ountain. proved more devoted to the patriot cause than was 
expected, and to the number of one thousand came together at the first 
warning under Sevier and other pioneer leaders, to resist the invasion. 
It was like the gathering of the minutemen at Concord and Lexington 
and of the citizen soldiers at Bennington, and with similar results, foe 
Ferguson's entire force of twelve hundred men was entrapped at 
King's Mountain, just over the line in North Carolina, in October, 1780, 
and killed, wounded, or captured to the last man. The American loss 
was inconsiderable. 

Reenforcements for the patriots poured in from the North. The 
chief command of the southern army was taken from General Gates 
The battle of and given to General Nathanael Greene, an able com- 
Cowpens. mander, who immediately divided his little army that he 

might harry Cornwallis on both his flanks. The latter, in self-defense, 
also divided his army, and the two western detachments of the opposing 
forces met at the Cowpens in western North Carolina, where the 
Americans under General Morgan overwhelmed the enemy under 
Tarleton in almost as complete a rout as befell Ferguson at King's 
Mountain. A mere handful of the British escaped. The victory was 
largely due to the American cavalry, a branch of the service which till 
then had been little used in the war. 

Greene himself now took charge of Morgan's victorious men, in a 
desperate attempt to unite them with the other detachment of the 
Americans operating on the east of Cornwallis. He 
Greene's succeeded in effecting the desired junction by a rapid 

gf^^J^ march to the north; and in so doing he contrived to decoy 

Cornwallis across the entire state of North Carolina to 
the Virginia line, far from his base of supplies at Charleston, South 
Carolina. A drawn battle was fought at Guilford Court House in 
North Carolina, where the Americans again availed themselves of 
cavalry; after which Cornwallis, not daring to attempt the march over- 
land to Charleston, withdrew into Virginia to join the British forces 
harassing that state. Greene wisely refused to follow the enemy 
farther, but returned southward. Here he soon recovered all the out- 
lying country, and effectually cooped up the British garrison in Charles- 
ton, where it remained till the end of the war. Camden was retrieved. 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 



159 



After some maneuvering against Lafayette, who was in command 
of the Americans in Virginia, Cornwailis settled down at Yorktown, 
Virginia, in just such a foolish situation as that taken by ^j^^ British 
the x\mericans at Breed's Hill at the outset of the war. surrender at 
He chose a position near the coast on the narrow penin- 
sula between the York and the James Rivers, with water on three 
sides, staking all on the ability of the 
British to bring him aid from New 
York by sea. The French fleet, how- 
ever, under de Grasse, approached 
from the West Indies, fought off the 
British fleet in a fierce engagement, 
and prevented Cornwallis's escape 
from his predicament by water, while 
Washington with four thousand 
French soldiers under Rochambeau 
and two thousand Americans exe- 
cuted a rapid movement from the 
vicinity of New York by land and 
water, joined his reinforcements to 
the army of Lafayette, and cut off 
the British retreat up the peninsula. 
After fierce fighting, Cornwailis sur- 
rendered his entire force of 7000 men, 
October 17, four years after Bur- 
goyne had surrendered 6000 men at 
Saratoga. Formal surrender came 
on October 19, 1781. Greene's 
masterly campaign in the Carolinas, 
Washington's equally wonderful 
movement from New York, and the timely aid of the French had 
saved the day. 

Yorktown ended hostilities so far as the United States was con- 
cerned, but Great Britain's European enemies continued the war 
against her. The French admiral, de Grasse, had cap- ^^^ ^^ l^ 
tured all the British islands in the West Indies with the West 
the exception of Jamaica, Barbados, and Antigua, and the 
fate of these three islands as well as of the eight already won, hung in 
the balance in a naval battle between de Grasse and the British under 
Admiral Rodney in April, 1782. On the coast of Virginia off Yorktown 
de Grasse had worsted the British fleet and helped to bring about the 
loss of the revolting continental colonies, and if he could worst the same 




SCALE OF MILES 



Washington's Mo\'ement to Yorktown 



i6o 



THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 



fleet a second time the British island empire in American waters 
would likewise disappear. Seventy ships of war were engaged for 
over eleven hours, "in one of the most tremendous contests ever wit- 
nessed on the ocean before the time of Nelson." Five thousand men 
were either killed or wounded, the French power in the islands anni- 




The Surrender at Yorkto\\'n 
From an old print. In the background is Yorktown, from which the British troops under Lord 
Comwallis are emerging. The British appear to be marching straight between Washington's 
Army on the hillside and the French forces near the water. The warships belong to the French 
squadron under Count de Grasse. 

hilated, and the British islands saved. "Brittania rules the waves," 
the British could still boast, grateful that the rich islands had been 
saved from the wreck of their American colonial empire. If Rodney's 
victory over the French had come before Yorktown, who knows 
what courage to hold out might have been inspired in the British? 

More than a year before his defeat of the French under de Grasse, 
Rodney and his fleet had captured the Dutch island of St. Eustatius and 
g. „ . carried away a booty of $20,000,000. Referring to the 
trade between this island and the mainland colonies, the 
admiral declared that "this rock, only six miles in length and three in 
breadth, had done England more harm than all the arms of her most 
potent enemies, and alone supported the infamous American rebellion." 
The end of ^^ ^^^ coursc of the summer of 1782, the British over- 

the war in came the Spaniards at Gibraltar, in Spain, and thus 
urope. maintained their possession of that stronghold. 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE i6i 

PEACE 

Not till after Yorktown would George III yield to the majority of 
his subjects in regard to America. In making military appointments, 
in working out the details of military operations, and ^^^^ constitu- 
in the general conduct of the war, he had directed the tionai crisis in 
policy of the government, his ministers serving merely " 

as his agents. Even the Prime Minister, Lord North, to whom it 
fell to execute the orders of the King, was at heart opposed to the war, 
as has since been revealed in his published correspondence. For five 
years that minister, to please his royal master, consented to carry on a 
bloody conflict contrary to the dictates of his own judgment. After 
the surrender of Burgoyne the nation turned to Pitt, the savior of the 
country in the crisis of the Seven Years' War, and demanded his 
appointment as Prime Minister, but the King refused. " This episode," 
says Lecky, "appears to me to be the most criminal in the whole reign 
of George III, and in my judgment it is as criminal as many of those 
acts which led Charles to the scaffold." When the surrender of Corn- 
wallis became known in Great Britain, the people could see nothing but 
the decline of the British Empire, and were plunged into the deepest 
gloom. To such a pass had George's policy of being "every inch a 
King," brought his country. In obedience to the will of his angered 
subjects the King at last allowed North to resign, in March, 1782. 
The Whig Prime Minister to succeed him was Lord Rockingham and, 
at his death in the following July, Lord Shelburne, who brought with 
themselves into office other Whig friends of America and negotiated 
the treaty of peace. This was the end of royal control of the British 
cabinet. From that day to this no monarch has dared to keep in 
office ministers who do not possess the confidence of the people. The 
loss of her American colonies, therefore, profoundly influenced the form 
of the British government. 

The peace commissioners of the United States, Benjamin Franklin, 
minister to France, John Adams, another representative of the United 
States in France, John Jay, minister to Spain, and, at The peace 
the very end of the negotiations, Henry Laurens, met the negotiations. 
British representatives at Paris, and concluded the treaty of peace 
in 1783. Says Lecky: "It is impossible not to be struck with the skill, 
hardihood, and good fortune that marked the American negotiations. 
Everything that the United States could with any shadow of plaus- 
ibility demand from England they obtained, . . . England emerged 
from the struggle with a diminished empire and a vastly augmented 
debt, and her ablest statesmen believed and said that the days of her 



1 62 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

greatness were over. But America, though she had been reduced by 
the war to almost the lowest stage of impoverishment and impotence, 
gained at the peace almost everything that she desired, and started 
with every promise of future greatness upon the mighty career that 
was before her." 

The independence of the United States was recognized by the 
treaty, and her boundaries made to extend from the Atlantic Ocean and 
The treaty the St. Croix River on the east to the Mississippi River 
of peace. q^ the west, and from the forty-fifth parallel, the St. Law- 

rence River, the Great Lakes, and the Lake of the Woods on the 
north to the northern boundary of Florida on the south. This last 
line ran from the Mississippi along the thirty-first parallel to the 
Chattahoochee, then down that river to the Flint, and in a straight 
line to the St. Mary's, thence along that river to the sea. It was 
agreed that the Americans as well as the British were to enjoy the right 
to fish on the Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland, and to land 
and cure their fish on certain neighboring coasts. The United States 
promised that there should be no impediment offered to the collection 
of all bona fide debts, and that they would recommend to the various 
states that they pass relief acts for the Loyalists. Both nations were 
to have the right to navigate the Mississippi, which right had been 
granted by Spain to Great Britain in 1763. 

In a separate treaty with Spain, Great Britain retained Gibraltar, 
recompensing Spain by allowing her to hold Florida, while in a treaty 
Other Brit- with France the French and British islands were in general 
ish treaties. restored to their status before the war. In a British- 
Dutch treaty most of the conquests on either side were restored. 

On April 19, 1783, eight years after the battle of Concord and 
Lexington, Washington declared the war over; the treaty of peace 
Th m lete ^^^ signed September 3 of the same year, and on 
restoration of November 23 the last British soldiers left the seaboard, 
peace. "The times that try men's souls are over, and the greatest 

and completest revolution that the world ever knew gloriously and 
happily accomplished," concluded Paine in the last number of "The 
Crisis." 

During the war the lot of those who had remained loyal to the 
mother country was a hard one. In civil life they waged many a bitter 
political struggle, usually only to their own humiliation. 
the\oyaiists They were disarmed, driven away from the polls on 
during the voting days, ridden on rails, tarred and feathered, their 
houses and barns burned, and their property confiscated. 
New York State alone seized Loyalist property to the value of about 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 163 

$3,000,000. It was observed that some of the fiercest fighting of the 
war took place when the patriots confronted their former neighbors in 
the British ranks. 

Whenever the British troops withdrew from any quarter large 
bands of Loyalists followed them. Fifteen hundred left Boston with 
Howe in March, 1776, and three thousand abandoned The Loyalists 
Philadelphia with Clinton in 177S. When, in 1783, the as refugees, 
last of the British forces left the shores of the country, Loyalists by the 




Fraunces' Tavern, New York 

Here Washington took leave of his officers, December 4, 1783. 
an etching by Wm. Sartain. 



From 



thousand gave up friends, fortunes, and homes, and went into exile. 
It has been estimated that the United States by this movement lost 
one hundred thousand citizens to Canada, the West Indies, and Great 
Britain. Ultimately Great Britain distributed over $15,000,000 
among these refugees by way of relief. The thousands of Loyalists 
who still remained in their homes in every state were destined to 
furnish the basis of a critical and conservative class in the new nation. 
The Loyalists founded Ontario in Canada, and contributed many 
thousands to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In these portions of 
Canada to-day is the flourishing society of United Empire .j-j^g Loyjj. 
Loyalists, composed of the descendants of the first refugees ist exodus 
and comparable to the Sons of the American Revolution ° ^^ 
in the United States. Says a Canadian writer: "It is but truth to 
say that the Loyalists, that is, the Tories of the American Revolu- 



i64 THE REVOLT OF THE BRITISH COLONIES 

tion, were the makers of Canada. They were an army of leaders. , . . 
Canada owes deep gratitude to her southern kinsmen, who thus, from 
Maine to Georgia, picked out their choicest spirits and sent them forth 
to people our northern wilds." 

Over against this defection of native-born citizens is to be set the 
loyalty of many foreigners, who had but recently arrived from Europe. 
^ . . John Paul Tones, Thomas Paine, and thousands who served 

The patnotic . , , "' ' . ' , • * • 

stand of the m the ranks as privates were as thoroughgomg Americans 
newly arrived g^g jf t^gy ^^(j sprung from the soil of the country. Joseph 
Galloway, speaker of the house of assembly in Penn- 
sylvania, a Loyalist with views that may have been colored by parti- 
sanship, declared that one-fourth of the American army was American, 
one-half Irish, and one-fourth English and Scotch. Lecky gives it as 
his opinion that "adventurous immigrants who had lately poured 
in by thousands from Ireland and Scotland . . . ultimately bore 
the chief part in the war of independence." He proceeds to point out, 
however, that in the beginning of the war, most of the soldiers came 
from New England, where the population was of almost pure English 
origin; and he refers to the opinion of one authority that Massachu- 
setts furnished more than one-fourth of all the .continental soldiers. 
The leaders, too, in the movement for independence, such as Samuel 
Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, George Washington, and Patrick 
Henry, were native Americans. Whatever the proportion engaged, the 
foreign-born element played an honorable part in the war. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Channing, United States, III; Lecky, American Revolution; Trevelyan, Ameri- 
can Revolution; Fiske, American Revolution; Tyler, American Revolution; Van Tyne, 
American Revolution; E. S. Maclay; United States Navy; Winsor, America, VI; Fisher, 
American Independence, and Benjamin Franklin. 

SPECL\L TOPICS 

1. Franklin in France. Old South Leaflets, VII, 5; Epochs, III, 142-149; Morse, 
Benjamin Franklin, 217-299; Hale and Hale, Franklin in France. 

2. Lafayette in America. Old South Leaflets, I, 7, and IV, 5, 97, and 98. 

3. The British Prison Ships. Tyler, American Revolution, II, 225-245. 

4. George Rogers Clark. Epochs, III, 1S8-196; Roosevelt, Winning of the 
West, II, 1-90; Thwaites, How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest; Bruce, 
Daniel Boone, 173-198. 

5. John Paul Jones. Old South Leaflets, VII, 152; A\'ery, United Stales, VI, 260- 

273- 

6. The Loyalists. Van Tyne, Loyalists; Tyler, American Revolution, I, 293- 
383, and II, 51-130; Winsor, America, VII, 185-214; Avery, United States, VI, 335- 
341- 



THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE 165 

7. The United States Flag. J. H. Fow, True Story of the American Flag; H. 
Champion, American Flag — The Ensign of Liberty, Journal of American History, I, 
9-18. 

ILLUSTR.\TIVE MATERI.\L 

Cooper, Pilot and Spy; E. P. Roe, Near to Nature's Heart; P. L. Ford, Janice 
Meredith; \\\ Churchill, Richard Carvel and The Crossing; S. O. Jewett, Tory 
Lover; Thompson, Alice of Old Vincenncs; S. W. ISIitchell, Hugh Wynn; Thacker.\y, 
Jlie Virginians; Bryant, Song of Marion's Men; Whittier, Yorktown; Campbell, 
Gertrude of Wyoming; Harte, Thankful Blossom; Hale, Paul Jones and Denis Duval. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Give an estimate of tlie generalship of Howe, Cornwallis, and Washington. What 
lesson in colonial administration was taught by the American Revolution. Show how 
the uprising of citizen soldiers at various times influenced the course of the American 
Revolution. How in general did the powers of the first and second Continental Congress 
dift'er from those of the present Congress of the United States?- Whose services to the 
Revolution were greater, Washington's or Franklin's? How do you justify the position 
of the Loyalists? Was the United States ungrateful to France in the peace negotia- 
tions? What reasons can you give for the failure of the invasion of Canada? \\'hy 
was Clark's conquest of the Northwest Territor\' so easy? Was the Revolutionary War 
a civil war between two parts of the same nation, or a war between two different 
nations? How many years of actual fighting were there in the Revolution? Where 
was the fighting carried on in the different years? Summarize the aid of the French 
to the Americans. What concessions were made by the British and what by the Ameri- 
cans in the peace negotiations? Ought the United States to have remunerated the 
Loyalists? 



PART IV 

ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF 
AMERICA, 1781-1801 

CHAPTER XIV 

THE FAILURE OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION, 

1781-1789 

THE WEAKNESS OF THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT 

The freedom of the thirteen revolting colonies was one thing, their 
permanent union in time of peace another. Should the thirteen new 
The contin- states go on each by itself, or together under a common 
ued necessity government? Could they survive at all if not united? 
o mo . j^ ^^j. ggpg^j-g^^g state action was manifestly impossible. 

When the War of Independence was looming on the horizon and while 
it was in progress, petty differences had to be laid aside for the common 
good, while the struggling colonies acted together under the uniform 
rule of the Continental Congress. 

The Articles of Confederation, which went into operation in 1781, 
provided for a central government with practically the same powers 
The Articles ^^ those already assumed, without legal sanction, by the 
of Confed- Second Continental Congress. All power, such as it was, 
eration. legislative, executive, and judicial, was vested in Congress, 

though this Congress of the Confederation, which succeeded the Second 
Continental Congress, saw fit to delegate part of its authority to 
other bodies. It selected certain state courts to try cases of piracy 
and felony on the high seas, and created special courts of appeal in 
prize cases. A large part of its executive powers Congress passed 
over to three boards or departments, headed by Robert Livingston, 
and after him, John Jay, Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Robert Morris, 
Superintendent of Finance, and General Knox and later General 
Lincoln, Secretary of War. 

When peace came it proved more difficult for the Congress of the 
Confederation to exercise its authority than during the war, and almost 

166 



FAILURE OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 167 

impossible for it to command respect. Students of the subject are 
now quite generally agreed that during the six years from -pj^^ ^^ 
1783 to 1789 the government of the Confederation of the 
was a failure. The states treated it with contempt, the '^''^®^- 
people lost respect for it, and foreign nations insulted it with impunity. 
The national government was fast drifting into anarchy, though city 
governments, county governments, and state governments were on 
the whole proceeding successfully. 

There was no one executive head or President and no national judi- 
ciary under the Articles of Confederation; and Congress, like the 
First and Second Continental Congresses, was in reality 
still a meeting of delegates, selected by the state legisla- states 
tures and acting under instructions from those bodies, treated 
In voting power in Congress the states were equal, each 
with a single vote, which was cast by the majority voice of the state 
delegation; and for the enactment of most measures by Congress a 
two-thirds vote was required. To amend the Articles of Confederation 
a unanimous vote of all the states was necessary. Sometimes the 
states refused to send any delegates to the Congress; sometimes they 
paid their delegates only a meager salary or even none at all, and so 
were often unable to secure the services of competent men; and some- 
times, to save expense, two states united in the support of a single 
set of delegates. Nor was it ever certain that the delegates, once 
elected, would regularly attend the meetings to which they were ac- 
credited. 

Congress had no power to raise money by taxation, but was 
compelled to rely on the voluntary contributions of the states for all 
that it expended. Occasionally the states paid the sums inability of 
that Congress requested, but as often refused to do so. Congress to 
During the life of the Confederation Congress received ^^^ 
from the states only $6,000,000 of the $16,000,000 which it requested. 
This explains the failure of the national government to pay the soldiers 
all that was due them, and its failure to discharge promptly its indebted- 
ness in Europe, It literally had no money and could procure none. 
The finrancial reputation of the country was soon ruined. 

This common reputation, as well as that of the separate states, was 
further shattered by the tardiness with which the latter met their 
state obligations and by their extreme readiness to issue for Finances of 
circulation among the people paper money such as had the separate 
been discredited in the days of the war. 

In contrast to their general disregard of the common good, was the 
patriotic disposition by the states of their western lands, Massa- 



1 68 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

chusetts, Connecticut, and Virginia, by the sea-to-sea clause of their 
The surren- charters, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, 
der of the by virtue of their charters, and New York by various 
lands of the treaties with the Iroquois, each laid claim to a part of 
states to the territory between the Alleghany Mountains and the 

Mississippi River. Virginia's claim seemed particularly 
strong because of the recent conquest of the country northwest of the 
Ohio by her state forces under George Rogers Clark, but her claims 
were overlapped by those of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New 
York. Conflict seemed inevitable. The states like Pennsylvania, 
New Jersey, and Maryland, which had no western claims and there- 
fore were possessed of less land from the sale of which to raise revenue 
and thvis to reduce taxes, were dissatisfied. Maryland went so far as 
to lay down as a condition of her entering the Confederation that 
the larger states surrender to Congress their western claims. New 
York responded by giving up her claims in 1780, and was soon followed 
by Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, North Carolina, and South 
Carolina. Georgia held out till 1802. A part of her claim, the so- 
called Western Reserve in northeastern Ohio, Connecticut withheld 
from the national government and disposed of directly to individuals, 
devoting a portion of the proceeds to those of her citizens who had lost 
property at the hands of the British invaders during the Revolution- 
ary War, and the remainder to the building up of her common 
school system. 

The transfer of the western lands to the national government had 
enormous influence upon the future of the country aside from the 

direct result upon the territory itself, for in this way 
fluence of there was created a common bond of interest among the 
the land states at a time when such bonds were few and weak. 

cessions* 

The steps that finally led to the federal constitutional con- 
vention of 1787, as will presently appear, were taken in response to a 
desire to improve communication and transportation between the sea- 
board and the new national possessions in the West. 

It was safe for individuals, as well as for the states, to despise and 
disobey Congress, as that body had no power to punish individuals and 

no soldiers to carry out its command save those voluntarily 
viduais furnished by the states. A sense of humiliation filled the 

treated country when drunken soldiers in Philadelphia, clamoring 

for their pay, which Congress had not the power to give 
them, actually drove that body out of the city at the point of the 
bayonet. The large body of Loyalists must have beheld with satis- 
faction the impotence of the new government. 



FAILURE OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 



169 



Great Britain was naturally unfriendly to the United States. She 
signed the treaty of peace, withdrew her troops from the seaboard, 
and formally received John Adams as minister from the 
United States, but that was all. 



01 ^ • . ^ r How foreign 

She sent no mmister of nations 



her own to the United States for a number of years, and treated 

Congress. 

she refused to conclude with her a treaty of commerce, 
though trade between the two countries went on none the less. She 
frankly gave as her reason for refusing 
to make such a treaty that she did not 
choose to enter into an agreement 
with the Congress of the United 
States which each of the thirteen 
states might break with impunity. 
This was plainly the attitude of an un- 
friendly nation, for Holland, Sweden, 
and Prussia, friends of the United 
States during the late war, readily en- 
tered into friendly commercial treaties 
with the new nation. His Majesty, 
George HI, also refused to open up 
his ports in the West Indies to United 
States vessels, which had been shut 
out from this rich trade by the war 
and were now clamoring for their old 
market. More galling still was the 
contemptuous refusal of the British 
to carry out in full the provisions of John Ad.uis 

the treaty of peace of 1783 by the 

withdrawal of their troops from the posts northwest of the Ohio River, 
which they had formally agreed to evacuate. Moreover, they made 
no move to compensate the slaveholders of the United States for the 
millions of dollars' worth of slaves which their army had carried off 
during and at the close of the war. It was alleged on the part of Great 
Britain that the United States herself was refraining from complying 
with the treaty of 1783 in two respects; first, by refusing any compen- 
sation to the Loyalists, and second, by not compelling the payment of 
private debts owed to British merchants before the war. Congress 
did, indeed, in compliance with the provisions of the treaty, recom- 
mend to the states that they make provision for recompensing the 
Loyalists; but it made this recommendation, well knowing that it had 
no power to enforce it and that the states would do nothing. 

With the limited powers of the national government and the 




I70 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

deplorable lack of public interest in national affairs, there is small 
Svmotoms wonder that a quarrelsome, lawless spirit made its appear- 
of anarchy ance in the states and led many patriots to fear that the 
in t e s a es. j^^^Jqj^ ^ya^s breaking up. New York was so far a stranger 
to a feeling of friendliness for the neighboring states as to lay a tariff 
duty on firewood coming into her borders from Connecticut and on 
farm and garden supplies from New Jersey; Connecticut levied taxes 
on importations from Massachusetts, and other states imposed similar 
taxes. It was a continuation of the old custom of intercolonial taxa- 
tion under Parliament. Thus arose a bitter commercial struggle 
between sovereign states. Connecticut and Pennsylvania almost 
came to blows over the possession of Wyoming Valley, which was 
finally awarded to the latter by a special court of arbitration. 

Rhode Island and Massachusetts were harassed by internal politi- 
cal contests over the expediency of issuing paper money. In Rhode 
Shays's Island paper money carried the day, but civil order was 

Rebellion, threatened and business came to a standstill while the 
question was pending. In Massachusetts the issue of paper money 
was defeated, but more than a thousand citizens, discontented at the 
outcome, gathered themselves into an armed band near Worcester in 
the central part of the state under the leadership of Daniel Shays, and 
devoted themselves for several months to military drill in preparation 
for active opposition to the state authorities. They burned barns, 
plundered houses, prevented courts from sitting, and besieged the 
arsenal at Springfield, until a superior force of militia was sent against 
them, which after some skirmishing compelled them to lay down their 
arms. Shays's rebellion, while a small affair in itself, was portentous 
because of the tendencies to lawlessness which it disclosed. Said 
Washington, hearing of the uprising: "How melancholy is the reflection 
that in so short a space we have made such long strides toward ful- 
filling the predictions of our transatlantic foes. 'Leave them to them- 
selves and their government will soon dissolve.' Will not the wise and 
the good strive hard to avert this evil? . . . Thirteen sovereignties 
pulling against each other, and all tugging at the Federal head, will soon 
bring ruin on the whole." 

When Congress, for the purpose of securing a commercial treaty 

with Spain, which would enable the vessels of the United States to trade 

The spirit of ^^ Spanish ports, proposed to renounce forever her claim, 

secession in based on the treatv of peace of 178^, to the free navigation 
Kentucky ^ , ,. ,^ ^.t ..'.'. ^ . , . 

and of the mouth of the Mississippi, lyirlg in Spanish territory, 

Tennessee. ^j^g infant community of Kentucky rose in opposition. 
She was angered at a policy which would deprive her of a free outlet 



FAILURE OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 171 

to the ocean for her products, and boldly threatened to secede from 
the Union if Congress did not desist from its purpose. The proposed 
treaty was abandoned. The same spirit of secession cropped out in 
the sister community of Tennessee, then legally a part of North Caro- 
lina. These western counties of North Carolina, in rebellion at what 
seemed the neglect of their interests by the mother state, for some 
months maintained an independent organization as the state of Frank- 
lin, under the pathfinder, John Sevier, as governor, and even requested 
Congress to sanction their secession from North Carolina by admitting 
them into the Union as a separate state. Congress refused the request, 
and shortly afterwards the seceders resumed their former allegiance. 
With secession cropping out on the frontier, civil uprising pending 
in two states, and bitter interstate feuds arising in various sections, 
the restraints and obligations of government were visibly weakening. 
The Confederation was in fact a mere "rope of sand." 

Congress scored one success in the midst of its failures. When 
the four large states surrendered to it their western claims, the 
United States found herself in the position of Great ^j^^ 
Britain before the Revolution, for she had a frontier success of 
of her own to govern. To her credit be it said that The^cTrdt- 
she treated her frontier in the same general way in which nance of 
the Americans had always contended that Great Britain 
should treat her colonies. She did not oppress the new land, but 
in a wise law, called the Ordinance of 1787, provided that the 
new territory should have a governor appointed by Congress, that 
it should have its own legislature, that under certain restrictions it 
should make its own laws, and that some day it should be divided into 
states with the same rights and privileges as the original thirteen states. 
Slavery in the territory was forever prohibited, and religious liberty 
was guaranteed. No tariff tax on trade between the territory and the 
states was imposed, and both states and territory were to share the 
expenses of national government in the same proportion. It was pro- 
vided that "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good 
government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of 
education shall forever be encouraged." As the different states were 
formed out of the Northwest Territory and admitted into the Union, 
the national government, by virtue of its ownership of the land, set 
apart lot sixteen in every township, one thirty-sixth of the entire state, 
for the endowment of common schools, and two whole townships in 
each state for the endowment of a state university. The same benefi- 
cent educational policy was later applied by the United States to the 
states formed west of the Mississippi. 



172 



ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 



This statesmanlike ordinance resulted partly from the desire of Con- 
gress to insure a national revenue from an increase in the sale of public 
The settle- lands, which naturally lagged as long as there was uncer- 
tainty as to the nature of the government of the territory. 
As soon as the new law was on the statue books, the Ohio 
Company, which had been formed in New England several years 



ment of 
Ohio 




The Start of the Ohio Company from Ipswich, Massachusetts, 
FOR Marietta, Ohio 

before and had delayed taking up land for settlement until it could 
secure the guarantee of Congress that orderly government according 
to New England standards would be established in the territory, pur- 
chased one million acres of land north of the Ohio River, and in 1788 
laid out the town of Marietta, in what is now the state of Ohio. 

THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION OF 1787 

People endured the general chaos of government under the Con- 
federation for a few years and then welcomed a change. Nothing 

_ shows better how seriously they felt the inadequacy of 

The move- ,. ., ,-^,-^ ... 

ment for a their national system than the response of the states in 

new national j^g- ^q ^^^ suggestion of a national convention to consider 
government. 1 1 ba 

the improvement of the federal government. This came 

about indirectly. Representatives of Maryland and Virginia first 

came together in 1785 at Mt. Vernon, Washington's home on 

the Potomac, to decide upon a commercial policy respecting the 

navigation of the Potomac River between the seaboard and the new 



FAILURE OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 173 

West. They accomplished their object but saw that to make any 
policy effective broader cooperation was necessary. At the invitation 
of Virginia, delegates from all the states were summoned to meet the 
next year at Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss the question of a general 
commercial policy for the entire country. In this convention five 
states were represented, but nothing was done beyond adopting an 
address to all the states, written by Alexander Hamilton of New 
York, urging them to send delegates in 1787 to a convention in Phila- 
delphia which should have a still broader purpose, namely, "to devise 
such further provisions as shall appear to them necessary to render 
the Constitution of the Federal government adequate to the exigencies 
of the Union, and to report to Congress such an act as, when agreed 
to by them, and confirmed by the legislature of every state, would 
effectually provide for the same." Official sanction of the convention 
was later given by the Congress of the Confederation. 

Fifty-five delegates came together in Philadelphia in this, the most 
important convention in the history of the country, every state being 
represented but Rhode Island, which feared that in a The national 
stronger union her commercial rights would suffer. It was convention. 
in this same summer of 1787 that the Congress of the Confedera- 
tion, sitting in New York, passed the Ordinance of 1787. 

Virginia headed her list of delegates with the name of George Wash- 
ington, who added to his long line of benefactions to his country when 
he heartily supported the convention. The weight of his Leading 
influence back of the movement added much to its chances delegates, 
of success, for nearly everybody loved and honored him and was ready 
to follow him. With him from Virginia came James Madison and 
Edmund Randolph. Benjamin Franklin, eighty-two years old but 
with a mind as active as that of a youth, headed the delegation from 
Pennsylvania, with James Wilson, Robert Morris, and Gouverneur 
Morris as colleagues.. Alexander Hamilton was the leading delegate 
from New York, John Dickinson from Delaware, Roger Sherman and 
Oliver Ellsworth from Connecticut, Elbridge Gerry and Rufus King 
from Massachusetts, and Charles Pinckney and Charles Cotesworth 
Pinckney from South Carolina. John Adams was absent from the 
country as minister to Great Britain, Thomas Jefferson as minister 
to France, and John Jay as minister to Spain. 

With Washington in the chair as moderator, the convention sat in 
secret session from May to September. Several of the members kept 
notes of the proceedings, the most complete of which are Madison's 
those of James Madison, published in 1840, a few years "Notes." 
after his death. 



174 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

The so-called Virginia plan, presented to the convention by Ran- 
dolph and favored by the larger states, provided for a national govern- 
The Virginia ment of three departments, legislative, executive, and 
P^^- judicial. The legislative branch, in the two houses of 

which the preponderance of power was to be with the more populous 
states, was to appoint the executive and judicial branches. 

Fearful of the power of the larger states under such an arrangement, 
the smaller states pushed a plan of their own, known as the New Jersey 
The New plan, designed to preserve the equality of the states. This 

Jersey plan, plan was practically that of the Articles of Confederation 
with amendments. By it Congress was to consist of one house, in 
which the states were to have equal representation, each casting one 
vote, which was to be decided by the majority of its delegation; and, 
as in the Virginia plan, there were to be a national executive and a 
national court. An extreme plan, proposed by Hamilton and based 
on the theory that the "British government was the best in the world," 
called for what would have been practically a monarchical form of 
government, but this plan was given no serious consideration by the 
convention* 

Only by compromise could the conflicting interests of the large and 

small states be harmonized. "Give New Jersey an equal vote, and 

she will dismiss her scruples and concur in the national 

compromises system," said one; and so it proved, when the small states 

°L*^5 ^°°* were given an equal vote with the large states in the upper 
sbtution. r 1 T • 1 • 1 1 T, 1 • 

house of the legislative branch. By what was appropri- 
ately termed the "great compromise," a national legislature of two 
houses was created, in the upper house of which, called the Senate, the 
states were to be equal, with two members from each state, chosen by 
the legislature thereof, while in the lower branch, or House of Repre- 
sentatives, the larger states were given the advantage by the provision 
that the number of a state's representatives in this body was to be based 
on population. The members of this house were to be elected by the 
people. In reckoning the population of a state for representation in 
this house and also for direct taxes, three-fifths of the slaves were to 
be counted. After this fundamental decision as to Congress, the 
next great difficulty concerned the executive, whether this branch of 
the national government should be single or multiple, and whether 
the incumbent or incumbents should be elected by Congress, by the 
people, or by electoral colleges. After prolonged discussion the present 
electoral colleges were agreed upon. An electoral college was to be 
chosen in each state as the legislature of that state might direct, and 
was to consist of as many members as there were United States Sena- 



FAILURE OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 175 

tors and Representatives from the state. The various colleges were to 
meet in their respective states, cast their ballots for President and 
Vice President, and send the returns to Washington to be counted in 
the joint session of the Senate and the House of Representatives. 

The President was made the commander-in-chief of the army and 
navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states when 
called into the service of the national government. He 
could grant pardons for all offenses against the United of the Presi- 
States, except in cases of impeachment, and with the rati- dent and Vice 
•tication of two-thirds of the Senate he could make treat- 
ies; with the advice and consent of the Senate he could appoint 
ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, the judges, and 
all other officers of the United States, whose appointment was not 
otherwise provided for. From time to time he was to give to Congress 
information of the state of the Union and to recommend to it such 
measures as he should deem expedient. He was allowed to call Con- 
gress together in extra session, and over all congressional bills to 
exercise a veto, which Congress could overthrow only by a two-thirds 
vote in both houses. Finally, he was to "take care that the laws be 
faithfully executed." It was the duty of the Vice President to pre- 
side over the sessions of the Senate, and in case of the death, resig- 
nation, removal, or inability of the President to serve, to act as 
President. 

As a concession to the Southern States, the power of Congress to 
prohibit the importation of slaves into the country was not to be 
operative till 1808. Congress was forbidden to levy an Minor 
export tax, but was allowed to levy an import tax and to compromises, 
exercise other designated powers, such as to borrow money, to regu- 
late commerce between the states, to establish uniform rules of naturali- 
zation, to coin money, to establish post offices, to grant patents and 
copyrights, to declare war, to raise and support armies, to provide and 
maintain a navy, etc. 

The Supreme Court was the most original creation of the convention, 
and is the feature of the federal government of the United States that 
has elicited most admiration from other nations. The The Supreme 
delegates themselves regarded the national tribunal as Court, 
the weakest spot in their scheme, whereas the electoral colleges, 
which have failed of their original purpose, they looked upon as one 
of the strongest features of the Constitution. 

The Constitution provided methods for its own amendment. An 
amendment might originate in either one of two ways; either two- 
thirds of both houses of Congress might propose one, or one might 



176 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

be proposed by a national convention, called for the purpose by 
Amendment Congress, on the application of two-thirds of the states, 
of the Consti- Ratification of a proposed amendment required a vote of 
tution. three-fourths of the states, acting either through their 

legislatures or through special conventions called for the purpose. 

The convention adjourned September 17, 1787, after thirty-nine 
of its members had subscribed their names to the new instrument. 
Ratification -^^ ^^^ *^^^ provision, when ratified by nine states, the 
of the Constitution was to go into effect among those states, 

onstitution. \Y'ithin less than four months after the adjournment of 
the convention four states had ratified the Constitution, and within a 
year's time all the states save North Carolina and Rhode Island had 
added their approval. The vote in Delaware, New Jersey, and 
Georgia was unanimous, but the close vote of 187 to 168 in Massa- 
chusetts, and 89 to 79 in Virginia, reveals the reluctance of the large 
states to part with the preponderance of power which they feared they 
would lose under the new plan. The vote in New York stood 30 to 27. 

In New York the victory for the Constitution was largely due to 
The " Fed- Alexander Hamilton, who loyally accepted the plan, 
eraiist." though, as framed, it was contrary to his own ideas. He 

made powerful speeches for- it, and in connection with Madison and 
Jay, wrote in its behalf the "Federalist," a collection of essays which 
are to this day a classic in the interpretation of the Constitution. That 
such men as Samuel Adams, John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry, Patrick 
Henry, and Richard Henry Lee were in opposition to the adoption of 
the new government is abundant evidence of the difficulty that must 
have been encountered in reaching a decision; and the fact of the 
adhesion of these men to the losing minority explains their practical 
disappearance at this time from national politics. 

North Carolina, the twelfth state to approve the Constitution, 
reached her decision a little over six months after the new government 
The delay of went into effect, while Rhode Island delayed her entrance 
North Caro- Jj^^q ^}^g United States of America six months longer. 
Rhode Not till Congress was on the point of levying a tariff duty 

Island. against her, as against an outsider, did she yield. 

The United States of America under the new organization con- 
stituted a federal government, in which the various states combined 
for the performance of certain functions in common, while 
nature of reserving to themselves separately all rights and powers 

the new ^q^ expressly given over to the new central government 

covcrnincnt x -' o *-» 

by the terms of the Constitution. Foreseeing the dis- 
putes and conflicts that would necessarily arise under such a system of 



FAILURE OF THE ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 177 

federal and state governments, even its advocates wondered if the 
national government could long survive with the state governments 
still active and vigorous, or if the one must not inevitably overshadow 
the other. There were the seeds of other conflicts in the threefold 
nature of the national government itself. It seemed unavoidable that 
the President, Congress, and the Supreme Court should disagree as 
to their respective rights and encroach upon one another's powers. 
The ultimate success of the new Constitution was by no means assured. 
Only time could tell how the experiment would work. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Channing, United States, III; Fiske, Critical Period; McMaster, United States, I; 
A. C. McLaughlin, Confederation and Constitution; B. A. Hinsdale, Old Northwest; 
WiNSOR, Westward Movement; Roosevelt, Winning of the West; Turner, Western 
State Making, American Historical Review, VIII; M. Farrand, Records. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Newburg Address. Contemporaries, III, 122-125; Fiske, Critical Period, 
108-112. 

2. The Reception of John Adams by George III. Contemporaries, III, 172-176. 

3. The Ordinance of 1787. Epochs, IV, 38-44; B. A. Hinsdale, Old Northwest, 
255-269; Roosevelt, Winning of the West, III, 253-269; Source Book, 169-172; 
Sparks, Expansion, 1 18-158. 

4. The Constitutional Convention. Epochs, IV, 31-38; M. Farrand, Framing 
of the Constitution; Avery, United States, VI, 414-437; Contemporaries, III, 198-232. 

5. The Adoption of the Constitution. Old South Leaflets, IV, 99, and V, 6; 
Fiske, Critical Period, 306-350; H. W. Elson, Side Lights, 25-53; Harding, Orations, 
47-121; Avery, United States, VII, 1-13; Source Book, 172-180; Contemporaries, III, 
233-254- 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

Cooper, Pioneers; J. L. Allen, Choir Invisible; Hale, East aiid West; E. Bellamy, 
The Duke of Stockhridge. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Did the same body frame the Ordinance of 1787 and the Constitution of 
the United States? What were the arguments for and against the Constitution? 
How did the powers of the national government under the Confederation differ 
from those of the present national government? What was the influence of the 
western lands on the formation of the Constitution? What were the favorable and 
the unfavorable points of the Articles of Confederation? What is meant by seces- 
sion? What manifestations of the spirit of secession were there before 1789? Give 
instances of the weakness of government under the Confederation. Show the impor- 
tance of the Mississippi Valley in American history. What did Rhode Island and 
North Carolina gain by entering the Union? Why did not the Congress of the Con- 
federation undertake to make the new Constitution? Why has the period from 1 783 



178 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

to 1789 been called the "critical period" ? How did an act of Maryland lead up to 
the Constitution? What provisions of the treaty of peace of 1 783 were not carried 
out for a number of years? What were the Virginia and the New Jersey plans in 
the constitutional convention? Describe the powers of the President and Congress 
under the Constitution. Describe the compromises of the Constitution. Compare 
the relation existing between Great Britain and Massachusetts before 1760, with 
the relation sustained between the Congress of the Confederation and the North- 
west Territory. 



CHAPTER XV 
THE SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION, 1789-1801 

PRESIDENT WASHINGTON'S PART IN THE ORGANIZATION OF THE 

GOVERNMENT 

In 17S9 George Washington entered upon a new phase of his illus- 
trious career. As commander-in-chief of the military forces he had 
won the independence of the country, and as private 
citizen during the national government of the Confedera- Washington, 
tion he had taken a leading part both in pointing out the ^® ^^* 
weaknesses of that government and in securing the new 
government of the Constitution. Great in military affairs and in 
private life, he had yet to prove his greatness as an official in civil 
life. If there had been a national office of importance under the 
Confederation, undoubtedly he would have been called upon to fill 
it; but there was none. The new government of the Constitution 
created such an ofiice in the presidency of the United States, and the 
people unanimously conferred it upon Washington. It was an honor 
to be chosen the nation's first President, and a double honor to be 
chosen unanimously. Every President since has met with opposition. 
John Adams of Massachusetts was elected the first Vice President. 

The first Wednesday in March, 1789, fixed upon by the old Congress 

as the date for the beginning of the new government, came 

in this year upon the fourth of the month, but through organization 

delays incident to the difficulties of travel the new House of the new 

r • 1- 1 -11 1 /- 1- government, 

of Representatives did not convene till the first of April 

and the Senate not till five days later. After the organization of the 

two houses and the counting of the electoral vote in joint session, 

Washington was officially informed of his election, and on the fifteenth 

of April set out from Mount Vernon to the seat of government in New 

York. His journey was one long triumphal tour, in the course of 

which he was greeted from town to town by crowds of enthusiastic 

citizens, and honored with banquets, toasts and addresses, songs 

and cheers. At Trenton, New Jersey, where twelve years before 

he had eluded Cornwallis by his strategy, a triumphal arch spanned 

the way, and girls dressed in white strewed his path with flowers. He 

179 



i8o 



ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 



arrived in New York on the twenty-third of April, and on the thirtieth 
he was inaugurated. 

The oath of office was administered before a large crowd of people 
at Federal Hall, Wall Street, New York. Like every President since. 
Washing- Washington repeated the following impressive words: 
ton's inaugu- "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the 
ra a ress. office of President of the United States, and will, to the 
best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of 




Mount Vernon 



the United States." In the inaugural message, delivered later to the 
Senators and Representatives, the new President displayed the devout 
spirit which was one of the characteristics of his greatness, when he 
reverently proclaimed, "It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this 
first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being, who 
rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of the nations, and 
whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that his bene- 
diction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the 
United States, a government instituted by themselves for these essen- 
tial purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its admin- 
istration to execute with success the functions allotted to its charge." 

The new government set itself at once to the important task of 

Precedents organization. The President was able to find little in the 

set by past history of the country to guide him in the conduct 

as ngton. ^^ ^^^ affairs of his novel office, but was obliged every 

day to make precedents of more or less importance for his successors 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 



i»i 



in the presidential chair. Some of his customs have been followed 
and some have been discontinued. It was rumored at the time that 
he desired as his formal title, "His Highness, the President of the 




Washington 
From the Statue by H. K. Brown, Union Square, New York. 



United States of America and the Protector of the Rights of the 
Same," which his countrymen soon shortened to "Mr. President." 
He delivered his messages in person to the joint session of the two 
houses of Congress, and in formal audience in his own quarters re- 
ceived their reply. To the treaties which he negotiated he at first 



l82 



ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 



received "the advice and consent" of the Senate in person in the 
senate chamber. These practices were later discontinued. 




New "^'ork 



iTY Hall, Federal Hall 



Erected 1700, at Wall and Broad Streets. Here George Washington was inaugurated first 
president of the United States, April 30, 1780, and here the Congress of the United States met 
till the removal of the National Capital to Philadelphia. 



Washington was not so confirmed in his own self-esteem that he 
refused to consult others. The secretaries or the heads of the various 
executive departments, who were after all only the chief clerks of the 
President, he often summoned to meet with him in private consulta- 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 



183 



tion. Such cabinet meetings were required neither by the Constitu- 
tion nor by Congress, but as a matter of personal assist- The cabinet 
ance and as a means of efficiency the custom proved of meeting, 
great value to Washington as it has to every succeeding President. 
Washington's choice of secretaries was most happy. Thomas 

Jefferson, the Secretary of 
State, was a statesman of 
long experience. 
At the beginning jeSon, 
of his career he 11^^*^^°^ 
had been a useful 
member of the legislature of 
Virginia; as a member of the 
Second Continental Congress 
he wrote the Declaration of 
Independence; as governor of 
Virginia during a part of the 
Revolutionary War he led his 
state in the abolition of several 
time-honored abuses, such as 
the right of primogeniture, the 
law of entail, and certain relig- 
ious restrictions; and as a 
member of the Congress of the 
Confederation he interested 
himself in the formation of the 
Northwest Territory, although 
when the Ordinance of 1787 
was passed he was no longer 
a member of that body, but minister to France. 

Alexander Hamilton, the Secretary of the Treasury, who was only 
thirty-two years of age in 1789, had already been prominent in the 
movement for the formation and adoption of the Constitu- Alexander 
tion. He was an immigrant from the island of Nevis in Hamilton, 
the British West Indies, a graduate of King's College, now the 
Columbia University, a veteran of the late war, and an able Treasury, 
lawyer and practical politician. In his difficult post at the head of the 
Department of the Treasury he proved to be one of the greatest secre- 
taries ever selected by any President. His differences with his col- 
league Jefferson over the interpretation of the Constitution occasioned 
many a debate in that famous cabinet, but Washington proved an adept 
in managing his unruly though brilliant advisers. General Henry Knox 




THOM.AS Jefferson 



1 84 



ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 



The part 
played by 
the members 
of the con- 
stitutional 
convention. 



of Massachusetts became Secretary of War, and Edmund Randolph 
of Virginia Attorney General. 

As was natural, it was the friends of the Constitution who were in 

control of affairs under the 

new regime. Washington 

had been president of the 

convention of 1787, and 

Hamilton and Randolph 
members of that famous body; seven of 
the members of the convention became 
Senators in the new Congress which they 
had helped to create, five more became 
members of the House of Representatives, 
while six others made up the entire mem- 
bership of the new Supreme Court. 



THE PART OF CONGRESS IN THE OR- 
GANIZATION OF THE GOVERNMENT 




Alexander Haaiilton 



After an engraving by J. Rogers from 
the Talleyrand Miniature. 



Like the President, Congress was called 
upon at the start to make various impor- 
The tariff tant decisions concerning pro- 
^^^- cedure, the powers of its officials, its own powers, and the 

relations of the two houses to one another and to the President. Com- 
mittees in the two houses were first chosen by the houses themselves, 
though after a short time this function in the House of Representatives 
was given over to the Speaker, in whose hands it was to remain for 
more than a hundred years. The most important contributions made 
by Congress to the organization of the new government were contained 
in a series of laws. First, in order to secure an adequate revenue to 
pay the expenses of the government, on July 4, 1789, it exercised its 
power "to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises," by 
passing as one of its first measures a general tariff, called "An Act for 
the Encouragement and Production of Manufactures," imposing 
duties on manufactured goods imported into the country. This was 
a tariff act of the same nature as the Molasses Act, the Sugar Act, and 
the Townshend Acts of the colonial period, which in their day had 
roused the Americans to vigorous opposition. Now, however, it was 
taxation by the people's own representatives. Charged with the 
responsibility of administering their own affairs, the Americans were 
glad to resort to the old tax, especially in the crisis of starting their new 
government, when the political expediency of laying but slight finan- 
cial burdens directly on the people was strongly to be considered. The 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 185 

indirect tax of the tariff was paid first by the importer, who passed 
the burden on to the public, so that all classes bore their share of the 
tax in the increased prices which they paid in the markets for imported 
goods. There were no gatherers of this tax outside the legal ports of 
entry, nothing to suggest a general tax. Had the people of 1789 been 
called upon to contribute directly out of their own pockets to official 
taxgatherers in every town for the support of the new national govern- 
ment, popular dissatisfaction would have resulted and the United 
States of America might have had a bitter and perhaps unsuccessful 
struggle for existence. 

Men argued for the new tax in the debates in Congress as they have 
argued for the tariff since, not only on the ground that the measure 
would produce a revenue but also that it was proper to . 
foster infant manufacturing industries by national legis- for the 
lation; in this way the legislature could encourage the ^^^^' 
country to become a self-supporting unit, able to produce all it required 
for its own consumption and capable in time of war of maintaining 
itself without importations from abroad. The low rates of the first 
act, in no case over fifteen per cent ad valorem, were slightly raised in 
1790 and again in 1792. Congress hoped that under the new tariff, 
manufacturing, which was still almost entirely confined to the homes of 
the people, would develop on a larger scale. 

An excise tax, which is a tax imposed on goods of domestic produc- 
tion, was levied on the manufacture of distilled spirits. From all sources, 
from the tariff, the excise, and the sale of public lands in c * 

1TT7-1 •! ri ouccess 01 

the West, the national revenue for the year 1792 exceeded the national 
$3,000,000. In view of the inability of the Congress of fi"^^'^^^- 
the Confederation to impose any tax at all, this financial record of the 
new government under the Constitution was encouraging. 

A part of the new revenue was devoted to meeting the national 
obligations of $12,000,000 due in France and in Holland, in regard to 
which all were agreed that perfect faith must be kept. As p jj^ ^ 
to the $40,000,000 or more of the domestic debt there was the national 
disagreement. This indebtedness was in the form of *" 
certificates payable to the holders, issued during the financial stress of 
the late war and during the days of the Confederation. As is invari- 
ably the case with such money, these certificates had depreciated in 
value as it became evident to the people from day to day that the 
government of the Confederation could not possibly pay them at their 
face value, and they were now bandied about by speculators for a few 
cents on the dollar. Secretary Hamilton proposed to Congress to pay 
ihe certificates at their full face value, even though in most cases the 



i86 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

benefit would accrue not to the original creditors, who had come for- 
ward to help the government with their money in the time of need, 
but to the speculators. He contended that only in this way could 
the government maintain the public faith and reassure its future 
creditors. Congress accepted his view, agreed to meet the interest 
promptly, and formulated a plan to pay the principal, with the happy 
result that the securities were soon quoted at par. 

The debts of the various states, amounting to $20,000,000, incurred 
for the common good during the Revolution, Hamilton proposed to Con- 
gress to assume in the name of the general government and 
of the state pay out of the national treasury. In view of the patriotic 
TT^'^t^dst*^^ motives of the states in advancing this money, the pro- 
posal seemed fair, although objection arose in those states 
which, like Virginia, had already paid off a part of the debt out of their 
own funds. It was shrewd policy to transfer to the United States 
in this way the support of the moneyed classes, who would greatly 
desire the success of the national government, if it was to become 
responsible for the payment of the state certificates which they held. 
When Congress hesitated, Hamilton, by a private agreement with 
Jefferson, won a few votes from Virginia for assumption of the debts, 
in return for which he agreed to find an equal number of northern votes 
for a plan to locate the national capital in the South, on the banks of 
the Potomac. Both plans then went through. 

After remaining for one year in New York, the seat of the national 
government was moved by Congress to Philadelphia for ten years. 
The new na- while the present site was being prepared in the wilds 

tionai capital between Maryland and Virginia. This selection of a 
at Washing- . , ., , r 1 r 

ton, District spot m the Wilderness for the permanent seat of govern- 
of Columbia, j^g^i; j^ay seem extraordinary, but history shows that 
it is always difficult under a federal form of government to agree 
on the location of the national capital. In 1900, when the British 
colonies in Australia formed the union of the Commonwealth of 
Australia, provision was made for the location of the national capital 
in an entirely uninhabited region, and this capital is now in process of 
construction. The Canadian states, forming the federation of the 
Dominion of Canada in 1867, appealed to Queen Victoria to select their 
capital city for them, while the new Union of South Africa, formed in 
1909, had so much difficulty with the same problem, that it divided its 
central government into a number of parts and located each part in 
a separate city. 

So undeveloped were the industrial and commercial resources of 
the United States in 1789 that only three or four banks were to be 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 187 

found in the whole country, and these were very small. Secretary 
Hamilton, confident of the tinal success of his policy of ^^ ^ ^ 

. . , 111 The first 

building up manufacturmg and commerce through the Bank of the 
tariff and the other financial measures of Congress, pro- gj'^\*|^ 
posed to Congress to give further aid to these lines of 
industry by the creation of a national bank with a capital of $10,000,000. 
The government was to subscribe one-fifth of the capital stock and 
was to have the right to require of the managers of the bank periodical 
statements of its condition. The bank was to aid the government 
in making loans and in the collection of taxes, and was to issue its 
notes to circulate as money of uniform value throughout the Union. 
In return for these services of the bank to the government, the bank 
was to enjoy the privilege of keeping the money of the United States 
on deposit in its vaults and of lending it out at interest, just as it 
loaned out at interest the money of any private depositor. 

At a loss to know whether or not to sign the bank bill as it came to 
him from Congress, President Washington appealed to his two Secre- 
taries, Hamilton and Jefferson, for their written opinions, ^jj^ poustj. 
Hamilton, who advocated loose construction of the Consti- tutionaiity of 
tution, maintained that it was proper for Congress to 
read between the lines of the Constitution and to do things found 
there only by implication, while Jefferson, who believed in strict 
construction, declared that Congress had power to do nothing which 
was not specifically authorized by the plain words of the Constitution. 

Hamilton rested his ardent support of the bank bill on the clause 
of the Constitution which says that Congress shall have power "to 
lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay ujunyton 
the debts and provide for the common defense and general versus 
welfare of the United States." Rightly construed by the 
rules of English grammar, these words meant to Hamilton that Con- 
gress had the power to provide for the general welfare, while to Jef- 
ferson they meant only that Congress had the power, not to provide 
for the general welfare, but to lay such taxes as would themselves 
provide for the general welfare. The word "necessary," in the 
necessary and proper clause, "The Congress shall have power: — To 
make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into 
execution the foregoing powers," in the mind of Hamilton meant 
"convenient" or "conducive to," but to Jeft'erson "absolutely indis- 
pensable." The former contended that when Congress was given the 
power, for example, "to lay and collect taxes," it must also by impli- 
cation possess the right to choose the means for carrying out its 
constitutional powers, whereas the latter denied this conclusion. 



i88 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

Washington accepted the views of Hamilton and signed the bank 
bill, and his decision on this question of how the Constitution is to be 
Washington's construed has in general been followed ever since. The 
decision. national government to-day is built up on the Hamiltonian 

theory of loose or broad construction of the Constitution. For exam- 
ple, from the power to "establish post ofl5ces and post roads" Congress 
derives its power to punish those who rob the mails, and from the 
power to "regulate commerce . . . among the several states" its 
authority to control the bridges that span the navigable streams and 
to regulate railroad rates. 

In another important act Congress passed by a two-thirds vote 

in each house and sent to the states for ratification a "bill of rights," 

„. ^ containing safeguards against encroachments by the 

The first ten ^ . ^ ^ ^ ^ i • u* j i-u ^• 

amendments central government upon personal rights and liberties, 

of the Con- similar to those in the state constitutions. These were 
stitution. 

ratified by the states and appended to the Constitution in 

the first ten amendments. The absence of these provisions had been 

one of the chief objections to the Constitution when it was before the 

people of the states for ratification, and their final incorporation as 

amendments added to the general satisfaction with the new instrument. 

Congress passed other important legislation. It created the sub- 
ordinate branches of the executive department, the heads of which 
Other im- were appointed by the President and consulted as his 
portant acts cabinet; passed a law, much after the fashion of the old 

ongress. navigation laws of Great Britain, to give to the vessels 
of the United States a monopoly of the coastwise shipping trade 
of the country; and passed the Judiciary Act, which has remained 
but little changed to the present day, outlining in detail the powers 
of the Supreme Court of the United States and the manner in which 
appeals may be carried to this tribunal from the courts of the states. 
The Ordinance of 1787 for the government of the Northwest Territory 
was reenacted. The Coinage Act of 1792 set up a bimetallic cur- 
rency, by which both gold and silver were to be coined; for sums less 
than a dollar, the decimal system was adopted. 

THE PART OF THE SUPREME COURT IN ORGANIZATION 

John Jay was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the 
. United States. Though this tribunal was of fundamental 

of the importance in the new scheme of government, its influ- 

Supreme g^ce was not at first apparent, inasmuch as it could ren- 

der decisions only when specific cases were submitted to 
it, and these did not immediately arise. The first great decision of the 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 189 

court bearing directly on the powers of the central government was not 
made till 1803. The tribunal refused to give mere advice. On one 
occasion, when the Executive submitted to it a list of twenty-nine 
different questions for its opinion, it respectfully declined to answer. 
On another occasion, when the legislative branch laid on them certain 
duties in regard to soldiers' pensions, the members of the court likewise 
refused to comply, taking the position that it would be better for the 
new government if they should confine themselves strictly to judicial 
duties. An early decision, given in favor of a citizen of another state 
against the state of Georgia, led to a general feeling that sovereign 
states ought not to be subject to suit brought by private individuals; 
and in response to this sentiment arose the eleventh amendment to 
the Constitution, forbidding suits against a state by citizens of other 
states or of foreign states. 

THE RISE OF NEW POLITICAL PARTIES 

In addition to the troublesome question of how to interpret the Con- 
stitution, raised by the Federalist measures of organization, there was 
political cleavage along another line. The instinctive ,. 
democratic tendencies of the masses of the people were 
arrayed against the aristocratic views of some of the leaders. Wash- 
ington was an aristocrat from the sole of his buckled shoe to the top of 
his powdered wig; few could be intimate with him. As President he 
gave grand receptions, at which he and Mrs. Washington received the 
guests with a stately bow from a raised dais; he rode abroad in state, 
and was accused by some of aping royalty. His Secretary of the 
Treasury declared at a banquet, "Your people, sir, your people are a 
great beast," while John Adams asserted his belief in the "rule of the 
rich, the well-born, and the able." In general, these men and their 
political supporters believed in a government of "those who alone 
from education, fortune, character, and principle are entitled to com- 
mand." The practical working of this theory was illustrated in the 
politics of the state of Connecticut, where the governor and the council, 
together with the corporation of Yale College, decided the policy of the 
Federalist party, which was the controlling party of the state, and 
gave their orders to the yearly meetings of the clergy of the Congrega- 
tional Church, who passed them on to the individual members of the 
party in every parish. The common man was not consulted. As 
in the days of the Declaration of Independence, what with property 
qualifications, religious qualifications, and educational qualifications 
for the suffrage, scarcely one man in five throughout the country 
could vote. 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 191 

The first statesman after 1789 to object successfully to this ten- 
dency toward aristocracy was Thomas Jefferson, who held the view 
that all men, not merely "the rich, the well-born, and the 
able," should have the right to vote, to belong to political ®™ocracy. 
parties, and to hold office. "Whenever our affairs go obviously 
wrong," he wrote, "the good sense of the people will interpose to 
set them right." Back of Jefferson were the democratic instincts of 
the masses. 

These differences of political opinion arising after the unanimous 
election of Washington in 1789 were accompanied by a violent display 
of partisanship. Two parties had been created by the jh F d ai- 
discussions over the ratification of the Constitution, the ists and the 
Federalists, who stood for the ratification of the new emocrats. 
Constitution, and the Anti-Federalists, who fought the erection of the 
new government. After 1789, when the adoption of the Constitution 
was no longer a question at issue, the problems of the organization of 
the government under it caused a new alignment of parties. The 
followers of Hamilton favored loose construction of the Constitution, 
a strong central government, and a restricted suffrage, and retained the 
name of Federalists; Jefferson and his partisans, on the other hand, 
opposed these principles and demanded a strict construction of the 
Constitution, were jealous for the rights of the states against the en- 
croachments of the central government, and championed democracy. 
This party of Jefferson was first known as Republican, later as Demo- 
cratic-Republican. Into it were gathered many of the old Anti-Fed- 
eralists and in general the champions of the masses, while the wealthy 
and conservative tended to join the Federalists. 

With the organization of the new central government largely accom- 
plished, the people were called upon in 1792 for a second time to elect 
a President. In conformity with the non-partisan nature 
of his election in 1788, Washington was still attempting tisan presi- 
to give to the country a non-partisan administration; t^^^^}^lt^ 
but with Hamilton and Jefferson wrangling with one 
another in the cabinet, and with the dissensions between the two 
political parties waxing hotter every day, he longed for retirement. 
The need of his strong hand at the helm, however, was apparent to all, 
and at the earnest request of Hamilton, Jefferson, and other leaders, 
he consented to accept a second term and was again unanimously 
elected. Vice President Adams was reelected by a vote of 77 to 50. 
On the other hand, the election of members of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, which is held on even years and comes in the year of the 
presidential contest and in the middle of the presidential term, was 



192 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

conducted this year on party lines and resulted in a victory for the 
Democratic-Republicans. 

THE MILITARY POWER OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT 

In the administration of the internal affairs of the country in 
Washington's second term, there were two vigorous and highly suc- 
^jjg cessful exhibitions of the military powers of the new 

Whisky government. The first test came in 1794 near the little 

town of Pittsburg in western Pennsylvania, on the occasion 
of the outbreak of the so-called Whisky Rebellion against the law of 
Congress laying a tax on the manufacture of distilled spirits. Shut off 
by the mountains from easy communication overland with the eastern 
seaboard, and removed by hundreds of miles from access to the ocean 
by water at New Orleans, the people of this section found it to their 
advantage to distill their corn into whisky before seeking a market, 
thereby reducing its bulk and facilitating transportation. As corn 
was their leading product, the Pennsylvania frontiersmen were hard 
hit by the tax. They tarred and feathered the tax-collectors and the 
tax went unpaid, until Washington determined to use extreme measures. 
The militia of the states, which before 1789 had recognized no obliga- 
tions save to their own states, were now subject to the call of the 
President. The question arose whether they would respond, if called 
out by their new master to serve against their fellow-citizens. Wash- 
ington felt keenly the seriousness of the crisis, as he well knew that the 
new government would be plunged into a dangerous situation if the 
militia of the states refused to obey his orders. All doubts on the sub- 
ject were removed when the militia of three states, fifteen thousand 
strong, responded loyally, and marched to the scene of the trouble. 
The rebellion collapsed. 

A second demonstration of the military power of the new govern- 
ment was afforded in the same year by a successful expedition against 
Defeat of ^^^ Indians of northwestern Ohio. The first settlements 

the Indians of the Ohio Company at Marietta and at other points in 
Ohio had undergone the usual struggles with the savages. 
General Harmar, sent against the Ohio Indians in 1790 at the head 
of fourteen hundred and fifty men, and General St. Clair at the head of 
about the same number in 1791, had been put to rout. The victims of 
the scalping knife on the second expedition were numbered by the hun- 
dreds. Washington's parting words to St. Clair had been, "You know 
how the Indians fight; beware of a surprise;" but St. Clair allowed 
himself to be surprised. Finally in 1794 Washington sent out General 
Anthony Wayne, the hero of Stony Point, who fought a decisive battle 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 



193 



with the Indians near the western end of Lake Erie in 1794, defeated 
them badly, devastated their country for miles around and concluded 
a peace with the savages of the whole region. "Wayne," said the 
Indians, "we cannot surprise, for he is a chief who never sleeps." 








An Early Frontier Fort in Ohio 



The settlement of the country after this decisive victory proceeded 
so rapidly that Ohio was ready for statehood in 1802, fourteen years 
after the first settlement. The somewhat earlier settle- R^pid settle- 
ment of the frontier in the South brought Kentucky ment of 
into the Union in 1792, less than twenty years after 
Boone had reached the region, and Tennessee in 1796, less than thirty 
years after her original settlement. 

Following the excellent precedent set by the Congress of the Con- 
federation in its dealings with the Ohio Company, the new Congress 
was very liberal in its disposition of the western lands. 
According, to the principle which had governed the whites position of 

almost from their first advent into the western hemi- the public 

• 1 1 lands. 

sphere, the Indians were considered to have no per- 
manent jurisdiction, that is, no right to exercise final authority, over 
the territory which they held; nor were they allowed by the United 
States to dispose of their lands to individuals. They gave up their 
lands to the national government by treaty, and the white settlers made 
their purchases from the government. The lands were sold by the 
government in full and complete ownership, sometimes to speculators 
in parcels of thousands of acres and sometimes to individuals in 
small farms. 

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 1789-1797 

The foreign affairs of the national government did not assume 
serious importance till the beginning of Washington's second term, 
when, at the outbreak of war between France and Great Britain in 



194 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

1793, they suddenly took a foremost place among the problems of 
The outbreak State and held that position for the next twenty years, 
of war be- It was fortunate that the new nation had a chance to 
and Great get well grounded before the outside distractions arose. 
Britain. France was in the midst of that great upheaval known as 

the French Revolution; the king had been deprived of his powers, de- 
throned, and beheaded, and a republic set up. The Declaration of the 
Rights of Man, which the French issued early in their struggle, was in 
its own words a solemn declaration of "the natural, inalienable, and 
sacred rights of man." "Men are born and remain free and equal in 
rights," ran its opening article; and the document went on to claim 
that " the principle of all sovereignty resides in the nation." Such a 
gospel of "liberty, equality and fraternity" did not accord with the 
monarchical ideas of the larger part of Europe. First Prussia and 
Austria rose up in opposition, then Great Britain, until finally prac- 
tically all Europe was combined to crush democracy in France. 

Both Great Britain and France in this crisis relied largely on food 

supplies from the United States. Trade with France was carried 

on under the commercial treaty of 1778, while that with 

of the United Great Britain went on without the formal sanction of a 

States in the treaty. When the news of the European wars reached 
cnsis. ■'. . ^ 

America the question arose wnetner the United States 

should continue in a neutral position, friendly to the British and the 
French alike, or should side with one against the other. The mer- 
chants of the seaboard preferred the former course, since they hoped 
thus to be able to continue selling their products to both sides. To 
them neutral commerce in time of war meant high prices for their 
products and high freight rates for the vessels engaged in the trade; 
and at the alluring prospect the ready capital of the country turned 
away from the manufacturing industries, which it had been one of the 
objects of the tariff law to foster, and sought the sea. Manufacturing 
was forced to wait for its boom till this profitable neutral commerce, 
arising out of the wars in Europe, should cease. 

War in Europe was no sooner started than France, reminding the 
people of the United States of the treaty of alliance of 1778, under 
Citizen which she had assisted them to win their freedom from 

Genet. Great Britain, set up the claim that turn about was fair 

play, and that she herself was now in trouble and required their help. 
To push her claims she sent Citizen Genet to the United States 2i6 her 
minister in 1793. Genet landed at Charleston, South Carolina, and 
on his journey to Philadelphia was greeted on every hand with enthu- 
siasm by the liberty-loving Americans, upon whom France's Declara- 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 195 

tion of the Rights of Man and her struggle for freedom were making 
a profound impression. Among the new minister's first acts in the 
land of liberty were the enlistment of American citizens to join in the 
wars of his native land, the commissioning of ships in American ports 
to sail as privateers in the name of France, and finally the bringing of 
captured ships, taken from the British, into American ports for judicial 
condemnation. In the capital at Philadelphia, Genet proved not 
half so shrewd and diplomatic as had Franklin in Paris fifteen years 
before. He was hasty and excitable; he insulted Washington and his 
ministers, made extravagant demands for instant assistance to France, 
and even appealed to the American people against their President. 

Washington faced the question calmly, with the realization that it 
was for the best interests of the United States to cultivate the arts of 
peace rather than allow herself to be drawn into a foreign ^j^^ United 
war. Some brought forward the argument that the States 
treaty v/ith the old French monarchy did not hold with °®" ^ 
the new French republic. Others maintained that even if it did 
hold, the treaty of 1778 was, in its own words, a "defensive alliance," 
and that the war in which France was engaged was an offensive war. 
In a proclamation the President declared that the United States would 
be neutral in the struggle between France and Great Britain. Con- 
gress sustained him in this position and passed a law, still on the 
statute books, forbidding citizens to enlist in the army or navy of a 
belligerent state, with which the United States was at peace, and 
prohibiting the fitting out in the ports of the United States of any 
vessel designed to commit hostilities against a state with which the 
United States was at peace. These rules in regard to neutrality have 
since been adopted by the leading nations. 

Washington vigorously enforced his proclamation and requested 
France to withdraw Genet as her oflftcial representative in the United 
States. The impetuous minister's indiscretions had done The recall 
far more to turn sympathy to the British than to aid the °* Genet, 
cause of his own country. 

In this sudden unpleasantness between France and the United 
States, Great Britain had an opportunity to attach the Americans to 
her own side, but this she neglected to do. She still _ . . , 
refused to withdraw her troops from the northwest posts tempt for the 
in compliance with the treaty of 1783, and to make com- Fi".*®^ 
pensation for the slaves which her soldiers had carried 
off during the late war; nor would she consent to make a commercial 
treaty formally opening her own ports and those of the British West 
Indies to the commerce of the United States. 



196 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

Both Great Britain and France persisted in certain objectionable 
practices against the neutral vessels of the United States which sought 
International ^° carry on trade with the enemy. It was generally 
law as to the agreed at the time that a neutral merchant vessel in time 
neutrals on of war might bring a cargo into an unblockaded bellig- 
the sea in erent port, but that a belligerent vessel of war might 
stop and search any neutral merchant vessel on the high 
seas, and if she found thereon certain forbidden goods useful in the 
prosecution of war, might carry her off to a prize court, where both 
the vessel and the forbidden goods were liable to confiscation. Just 
what should be included in the list of prohibited goods, called contra- 
band of war, was in dispute. Almost the only goods about which there 
was general agreement were munitions of war. The United States, as 
an agricultural nation, contended that food supplies should not be 
considered contraband, while Great Britain, to keep the American 
supplies away from France, declared them contraband. Furthermore 
Great Britain and France maintained the doctrine of a paper blockade, 
that is, that one belligerent had the right in war, merely by proclama- 
tion, to prohibit all neutral vessels, whatsoever their cargo, from 
trading in the ports of the other belligerent, and to attack them if they 
attempted to do so. The United States, on the other hand, claimed 
that a blockade could not be created merely by proclamation, but 
that to exist at all it must be made effective by ships of war on guard 
at the blockaded ports. 

The warring nations refused to admit that the goods of the enemy 
on a neutral ship should be exempt from capture and insisted that they 
Other cus- ^^^ ^^^ right to seize all such goods whenever they could, 
toms of inter- in spite of the position which the United States generally 
took in the treaties of this time that "free ships make 
free goods," excepting contraband of war. France claimed that the 
goods of a neutral on an enemy's ship were subject to seizure, while 
the United States and Great Britain maintained that neutral goods on 
an enemy's ships, except contraband of war, were exempt from cap- 
ture. Great Britain further contended that, when a nation with 
colonies closed those colonies to trade with the vessels of outside nations 
in time of peace, she should not, upon entering into war, open them 
suddenly and allow neutral vessels to carry on the colonial trade. 
This was the so-called rule of 1756, promulgated by Great Britain at 
the opening of the French and Indian War, to prevent France from 
allowing neutrals to carry on her trade with the French West Indies, 
which in time of peace she reserved to herself. 

From time immemorial Great Britain had been in the habit, in time 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 197 

of war, of impressing, that is forcing, her citizens to serve in her navy. 
When, now, in the process of searching the neutral ves- impressment 
sels of the United States, she detected the presence there of American 
of supposed British subjects, she assumed to carry on ^^^°^®'^" 
their impressment from these neutral vessels; and France, too, indulged 
in the same practice, though to a less extent. 

While international law, which is in reality not law at all, but 
simply international custom determined by the practices of civilized 
nations, is now in general accord with the contentions of international 
the Americans, at that time both the British and the law on the 
French practices, though occasionally objected to by other British and 
European nations, had the sanction of usage. *^^ French. 

Great Britain and France enforced their ideas concerning contra- 
band by the capture of American vessels carrying these goods, and 
Great Britain sought to prevent the vessels of the United ^ ... 
States from taking part in the trade of the French West attacks on the 
Indies, which France suddenly opened up to them, ^^'^g^^'^th 
Within a short time each belligerent had effected many United 
captures of the helpless vessels of the United States. ^ ^^' 

Popular indignation in the United States rose higher against 
Great Britain than against France, partly because of the sympathy 
felt for France in her professions of liberty, partly because -^^rashinrt n' 
the British captures outnumbered those of the French, decision for 
but mainly because of the passions roused by the Revolu- p^^*^®' 
tionary War. To curb the rising war feeling against the British and 
to preserve the neutrality to which he was committed, Washington 
sent John Jay, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, to Great Britain to clear the atmosphere if possible by a treaty. 
In this step the President was warmly upheld by the merchants 
of the country. In spite of the many captures of their vessels, the 
annual foreign commerce of the United States merchants increased 
from $26,000,000 in 1793, when the British-French war opened, to 
$47,000,000 in 179s; the gains of the merchants were outweighing 
their losses, and fearful that war between the United States and Great 
Britain would cut off this growing neutral trade, they gave their voice 
for peace and for any honorable method of maintaining neutrality. 

According to the treaty negotiated by Jay, Great Britain abandoned 
the northwest posts and removed one of the charges against her that 
she had neglected to carry out the provisions of the The Jay 
treaty of 1783, but she refused compensation for the treaty, 
slaves she had carried off. One of the two charges against the United 
States for failure to comply with the treaty of 1783 was met by the 



198 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

provision that a commission be appointed to determine the amount due 
on the old debts to merchants in Great Britain. This commission was 
appointed but could come to no agreement, and by a treaty in 1802 
the United States paid Great Britain $2,600,000 in full settlement 
of the claims. The other charge of the British that the Americans 
dishonored the treaty of 1783 by refusing to remunerate the Loyalists 
for their losses, the Jay treaty passed over in silence. The British so far 
met the American demand for a commercial treaty as to open the ports 
of Great Britain to American vessels, and even those of the West Indies 
to American vessels of a certain size. This last concession as to the 
West Indies, however, was coupled with the condition that the United 
States must on her part agree not to export to any part of the world 
molasses, sugar, coffee, cocoa, or cotton, which so angered the Senate 
of the United States that in ratifying the treaty it refused to accept 
the West Indian concession with its humiliating proviso. 

Not a single contested principle of international law as to neutral 
trade was yielded by the British in the treaty, not even the right of 
The rights of ii^ipressment of seamen. The United States neutral 
neutrals in vessels would, therefore, still be liable to capture and con- 

rea y. fiscation if they carried to France the alleged contraband 
foodstuffs, broke through a paper blockade, carried an enemy's goods, 
or traded in the French West Indies, and their sailors would still be 
liable to impressment. There was some compensation to the Americans 
in the provision of the treaty for the appointment of a commission to 
determine the extent of any unwarranted losses already inflicted on 
the American vessels by the British. The commission met but dis- 
banded without being able to come to an agreement, and later the 
British by treaty awarded the Americans $10,000,000 for their losses. 
Finally, the Jay treaty provided for the appointment of a commission to 
settle a dispute which had arisen concerning the northeastern boundary 
line between Canada and the United States, the question being which 
was the river mentioned as the St. Croix in the treaty of 1783. 

Unacceptable as the treaty was on account of the refusal of the 
British to give up their practices upon the sea, it averted war with 
Great Britain. This seemed to Washington and the 
the treaty in Conservative commercial classes a distinct triumph, but 
Uie United ^]^g friends of France and many other Americans con- 
sidered the treaty a disgrace. Hamilton was stoned for 
defending the agreement, while the President himself was abused in 
language which, he said, "could scarcely be applied to a Nero, to a 
notorious defaulter, or even to a common pickpocket." 

The Jay treaty became known in France late in the year 1795. 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 199 

That their old ally should make such a friendly agreement with their 
enemy seemed to the French unbelievable. The United French 
States minister to France, James Monroe, sympathized hostility, 
with the French position, and was recalled for his indiscreet criticism 
of his own government. France refused to receive his successor, 
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and promptly ordered new captures of 
American merchantmen; nor did the French resume friendly relations 
with the United States for several years. 

Two other important treaties were arranged by Washington. One 
with Spain recognized at last the old claim of the United States, based 
on the treaty of 1783, that she had the right to ship prod- Two other 
uce down the Mississippi and out from the Spanish port treaties, 
of New Orleans without the payment of a duty; another, with the 
Barbary States of the northern shores of Africa, promised to these 
free-booters of the Mediterranean a bribe of shiploads of presents 
in return for security from capture for the vessels of the United 
States. 

These trade treaties with the European nations, like those con- 
cluded in. the previous decade with France, Holland, Sweden, and 
Prussia, show the efforts of the new nation to reach out for . 

world-wide trade. Another phase of the same movement, ning of 
small at first but destined to grow, was the bold attempt ^?^® ^*^^ 
of the merchantmen of the United States to open an 
Asiatic trade. Before the Revolution the longest voyages of these 
ships had taken them only as far as the west coast of Africa, but 
immediately after the treaty of peace with Great Britain merchants 
of New York and Philadelphia fitted out the Empress of China, loaded 
her with ginseng and other articles of commerce attractive to the 
Chinese, and on February 22, 1784, started her on the long voyage to 
China for tea and other Chinese products. She arrived in Canton, 
China, in six months, after a journey of thirteen thousand seven 
hundred miles. The next year she returned, and the following year a 
ship from Salem, Massachusetts, started out on a similar voyage. In 
1786 eight vessels sailed for the Orient, in 1789 fifteen. 

Four years after the Empress of China rounded the Cape of Good 
Hope into the Indian Ocean, the Columbia, Captain John Kendrick, and 
the Lady Washington, Captain Robert Gray, rounded Cape Discovery of 
Horn into the Pacific with cargoes of trinkets which they the Coium- 
exchanged with the native Indians on the present north- ^^ ^^^^' 
western coast of the United States for the furs of the sea otter, the 
seal, and other fur-bearing animals. This new cargo they carried to 
Canton, China, where they bartered away the furs to the Chinese for 



200 



ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 



teas, silks, and porcelains for the Boston market. The Columbia re- 
turned home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and thus an American 

vessel sailing under the American flag cir- 
cumnavigated the globe for the first time. 
In a similar voyage in 1792 Captain Gray 
in the Columbia discovered the Columbia 
River and this vessel sailed around the 
globe a second time. 

Most of the chief ports of the New 
England and Middle States were inter- 
ested in the new trade with the Orient, 
among them Boston, Salem, Newport, 
Nantucket, New Bedford, and New Haven, 
and many a fortune was derived from the 
"India ships," as those engaged in the 
On some voyages the profits reached one 




Medal Struck for the Voyage 
of the "columbu" 



Asiatic trade were called, 
thousand per cent. 

WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL ADDRESS 

As the end of his second term drew near. President Washington 
desired to give parting words of counsel to his fellow-countrymen, and 
w h'n - ^^ highly respected was he that this step seemed most 
tons fare- appropriate, although it was required neither by the Con- 
weU words. stitution nor by Congress. No other President, with the 
exception of Andrew Jackson, has presumed to follow the example. 
Washington begged the people to cherish the Union of the states, 
pointing out how North, South, East, and West were mutually helpful 
to one another; he sounded a warning against political parties which 
represented mere sections, and against too violent partisanship in 
national parties; and he advised against further amendment of the 
Constitution. Religion and moraHty, as "indispensable supports" 
to "political prosperity," were urged upon all. He exhorted the 
country to "observe good faith and justice with all nations," to "cul- 
tivate peace and harmony with all." "It is our true policy," he 
declared, "to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the 
foreign world." In other words, he would have the nation in its foreign 
relations maintain the principles of his own proclamation of neutrality. 
In the midst of the Civil War, sixty-five years later. President Abraham 
Lincoln considered these words of the first President so wise that he re- 
quested his fellow-citizens to assemble and listen to the reading of the 
entire address, and in almost every city, village, and hamlet in the 
Northern States this was done on the twenty-second of February, 1862. 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 2or 

In 1796 Vice President John Adams received the nomination of the 
Federalist party for the presidency at the hands of the congressional 
caucus or convention of the members of that party in -r^Ym Adams 
Congress, while the caucus of the Democratic-Republi- the second 
cans gave a similar nomination to their founder, Thomas '^^^^ ^" * 
Jefferson. The congressional caucus method of nomination was 
secret, liable to intrigue, and undemocratic, but it was a gathering 
of party leaders that was easily assembled in these early days when 
poor roads and bridges rendered national gatherings difficult. Adams 
was chosen President by the electors with a vote in the electoral col- 
leges of 71, against 68 for Jefferson, who became Vice President. In 
this one instance the system of election brought into office a President 
and a Vice President of ditferent parties. 

CONTINUED TROUBLES WITH FRANCE 

President Adams took up with energy the question of relations 
with France, bequeathed to him as an unsettled problem from the pre- 
vious administration. With the consent of the Senate The "X. Y. 
he sent three special commissioners to France to negotiate ^- ^^ir." 
a treaty of friendship, just as Washington had sent Jay to Great Britain 
to straighten out relations with that country. The French statesmen 
offered open insult to these commissioners by demands for huge bribes 
as a necessary preliminary to negotiations. One of the commissioners, 
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, spurned the proposal 
with the indignant exclamation, "No, no, no, not a sixpence," which 
his eulogists have expanded into "Millions for defense, not one cent 
for tribute," and President Adams voiced the sentiment of the country 
when he declared in a message to Congress that he would not send 
"another minister to France without assurance that he would be 
received as the representative of a great, free, and independent nation." 
In communicating to Congress the insulting demandsof the French the 
President omitted giving the real names of the French agents con- 
cerned, but substituted in their places in the published dispatches 
the letters X. Y. and Z., and the episode came to be known as the "X. 
Y. Z. affair." 

The spirit of war was aroused in the United States. By enthusiastic 
votes the two houses of Congress provided for the organization of a 
new army with Washington as commander and for a large Reprisal on 
increase in the navy. A few successful encounters took France, 
place with the French frigates in the waters of the French West Indies, 
but war was not formally declared. In these hostile acts toward 
France the United States was simply retaliating for that country's 



202 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

supposed hostile acts toward herself; in other words, the so-called 
naval war with France of 1798 was "a prolonged series of reprisals." 
Contrary to the wishes of the leading members of his party, President 
Adams resumed friendly relations with France, when Napoleon Bona- 
Peace with parte, who had risen to supreme power in that country, 
France. made peaceful overtures. A treaty between the two 

nations followed in 1800, in which the United States, in return for the 
consent of France to the abrogation of the old treaty of alliance of 1778, 
definitely renounced its claim on France for damages to American ship- 
ping since the outbreak of the British-French war in 1793. France 
subscribed to the principle of the United States that "free ships make 
free goods," but she did not renounce any of her other contentions 
concerning the rights of neutrals on the sea in time of war. 

FEDERALIST MISTAKES IN INTERNAL ADMINISTRATION 

The statesmanship that had guided the Federalists in their organiza- 
tion of the government and in their conduct of foreign affairs seemed 
to desert the party in their administration of internal 
ministration, affairs under Adams. As the excitement against France 

Three un- increased from month to month in 1798 the Democratic- 
wise laws. . ... 

Republican party, which prided itself on friendliness with 

France, was completely eclipsed in popular esteem by the Federalists, 
who, as the party in power, stood for war. In the rising war spirit 
President Adams became very popular, but he failed to make a wise 
use of his power. He gave his assent to the passage of three unwise 
laws, which were aimed primarily at the French immigrants and sym- 
pathizers, though he was opposed in the step by some of the strongest 
men of the party, such as Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall. 
First, the Naturalization Act, which raised from five to fourteen years 
the period of residence required of foreigners before naturalization, 
reversing the traditional policy of welcome to immigrants which had 
characterized the country from the beginning. Second, the Alien Act, 
which gave to the President the power to send out of the country "all 
such aliens as he shall judge dangerous to the peace and safety of the 
United States," another thrust at immigrants. Third, the Sedition 
Act, which made it a crime to "write, print, utter, or publish scan- 
dalous and malicious writing" against the President or Congress, "with 
the intent to defame" them or, "to bring them or either of them, into 
contempt or disrepute," a blow at freedom of speech and of the press. 
Conservative Europe, backed by the ideals and traditions of a 
civilization centuries old, could hardly have gone farther in checking 
freedom. An unfriendly attitude toward aliens and attacks on the 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 203 

freedom of the press and on free speech might have been expected 
in long-established monarchies; indeed at this very time significance 
such laws were temporarily on the statute books of Great °^ *^® ^^^®' 
Britain. That such laws were passed as the acts of a free country on 
the liberty-loving frontier in a time of peace, is a matter of wonder. 
Evidently changes had been going on in the United States. 

Life on the seaboard, which had been the first American frontier, 
was undergoing a change, and in some ways it already more resembled 
the life of Europe than its own original condition in the wil- 
derness or the life on the frontier west of the AUeghanies. of the con- 
There was a marked tendency toward conservatism, servative 

■' reaction. 

Manufacturing still lagged, but thanks to the stimulus 

of the new opportunities opened by the wars in Europe, commerce on 
the sea and the allied interest of shipbuilding were larger industries 
than ever before and were laying the foundations of great fortunes. 
New companies were speculating in western lands, and the Bank of 
the United States and smaller private banks were affording increased 
banking opportunities. With greater wealth came the conservatism 
which usually accompanies commercial prosperity. 

While the seaboard was tending to conservatism, the West, progres- 
sive, restless, independent, maintained the characteristics of frontier life. 

As the frontier has gradually marched from year to year 

1 • . . .1 -r. -r -1 The inter- 

across the contment to the Facmc, conservatism has action of the 

slowly followed, and the interaction of the ideas of the Sf^\^"*l 
East and of the West has played a large part in shaping 
the national destiny. 

The Democratic-Republican protest against the Federalist laws 
found expression in Virginia and Kentucky in resolutions passed by 
their legislatures in 1798, known as the Virginia and the The Virginia 
Kentucky Resolutions, which embodied principles of ^"'^. ^l'^" 
far-reaching importance. These resolutions, from the lutions of 
pens of Madison and Jefferson respectively, declared the ^''^^• 
Alien and the Sedition Acts unconstitutional. They set forth the doc- 
trine of states' rights according to which it was claimed, first, that 
when the Constitution was formed, the states by a common agreement 
united to 'create the national government and intrusted to it certain 
powers; second, that the national government so created was authorized 
to act simply as the agent of the states, which were the real sovereigns, 
and to do only those things which were specifically granted to it in 
the compact or Constitution; and third, that the right to decide whether 
the national government did or did not act according to the terms of 
the compact, belonged to the states alone, the creators of the national 



204 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

government. The legislature of Kentucky went a step farther the 
following year, and added to these premises the logical conclusion that 
if a state should decide that the national government had acted con- 
trary to the agreement, for example by passing unconstitutional laws 
in Congress, the states could declare those laws null and void. No 
other states indorsed the stand of Virginia and Kentucky, though 
copies of the resolutions were sent to all the legislatures. 

The theory of government embodied in these resolutions is some- 
times called the compact theory of the Constitution. How it would 
Federalist work out in actual practice was not at the time made 
criticism. clear. Its enemies declared that it would not work at 

all. They pointed out how it might easily happen that some states 
would choose to nullify one law, other states another law, and so on, 
until the national government would become an object of ridicule and 
its laws be reduced to confusion. These were the arguments of Wash- 
ington, Adams, and the Federalists, who favored accepting the Supreme 
Court as the final judge for all the states in matters concerning the 
interpretation of the Constitution, on the ground that in this way 
only could the dignity of the national government be safeguarded and 
the uniformity of the national laws throughout the Union be secured. 

The principles of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions led to 
many conflicts between the states and the national government, 
Later im- particularly in New England before and during the war 
portance of of i8i2, when that section was opposed to the policy of 
cipiesofthe the national government, and in South Carolina in 1832, 
Resolutions, when that state actually nullified a law of the United 
States. The influence of the theory reached its height when it played 
an important part in bringing on the Civil War between the Northern 
and Southern States in 186 1. 

In the last weeks of the administration of President Adams, when 
the Federalists knew that they must soon give up their control of the 
The Feder- executive and legislative branches of the government, 
aiists and they passed a law creating sixteen new United States 
e courts. judgeships, a number far beyond the needs of the time, 
and the President filled the places with the members of his own 
party. These were the "midnight judges," so named because Adams 
was said to have been occupied far into the night of his last day in 
office signing their commissions. Six weeks before the end of his ad- 
ministration Adams appointed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
of the United States John Marshall of Virginia, who is generally 
recognized as the greatest judge who ever sat upon the Supreme 
Bench. 



SUCCESS OF THE NEW CONSTITUTION 205 

A bitter dispute arose over the presidential election of 1800. The 
Constitution directed the presidential electors, when they came together 
in their respective states, to vote by ballot for tv^o persons, 
the one receiving the greatest number of votes, if a the presiden- 
maiority, to become President, and the one receiving the *^H^il*^^'°° 

1 • 1 1 r -r ■ ■ , of 1800. 

next highest number 01 votes, if a majority, to become 
Vice President. This provision was made in the expectation that 
each elector would exercise his own independent judgment in casting 
his ballot, but that a sufficient number would usually agree to give a 
majority of votes to one candidate. In case the colleges failed to 
elect, the choice of the President was to devolve upon the House of 
Representatives and that of the Vice President upon the Senate. For 
some strange reason it was not foreseen by the makers of the Con- 
stitution, or if foreseen no provision was made for the contingency, 
that political parties would arise among the voters, which would 
deprive the electors of their freedom of choice. In 1800 party 
loyalty brought it about that the Democratic-Republican electors 
cast their ballots in the electoral colleges for the candidates selected 
for them by their party. Every Democratic-Republican elector 
voted for Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr, who thus were tied 
for the lirst place with 73 votes each, while President Adams and 
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney received the Federalist vote of 65 and 64 
respectively. The House of Representatives voted off the tie in favor 
of Jefferson, who became President, while the Vice Presidency fell to 
Burr. To avoid a tie vote in the future the twelfth amendment of the 
Constitution was adopted in 1804, directing the electors to ballot for 
President and Vice President separately. 

THE SERVICES OF THE FEDERALISTS 

With the close of the administration of Adams the regime of the 
Federalists ended, and a long period of Democratic-Republican rule 
in national affairs was begun. The Federalists had ^j^^ services 
placed the government on a firm footing and established of the Feder- 
valuable precedents. They had given the nation its first ^'^^^• 
tariff, and had satisfied the foreign and domestic creditors of the 
country as to the good faith of the government; they had created 
the national capital at Washington, set up the national bank, passed 
the Judiciary Act, and used the national military power with energy 
against an incipient insurrection and against the Indians; they had 
shown a firm hand amidst difficulties in dealing with Great Britain, 
France, and Spain, and on the whole had been successful in the con- 
duct of foreign affairs; and they had encouraged a capitalist class and 



2o6 ORGANIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES 

fostered business. In all these matters they had acted on the theory 
of loose construction of the Constitution, and had insisted on exercising 
the national powers to the full, with the welfare of the nation as a 
whole in view rather than that of the separate states. However, with 
their leanings toward aristocracy, they wandered too far from the 
democratic spirit of the country, and for this they were thrust from 
power. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

McMaster, United States, I; Bassett, Federalist System; J. P. Gordy, Political 
Parties in the United States; Lodge, George Washington; N. Hapgood, George Wash- 
ington; P. L. Ford, George Washington; H. B. Learned, The President's Cabinet. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Whisky Rebellion. Epochs, IV, 90-107; Bassett, Federalist System, 
101-116; Avery, United States, VII, 141-155. 

2. President Washington's Social Customs. Epochs, IV, 62-64; Bassett, 
Federalist System, 150-162; Source Book, 181-183; Jotirnal of William Maclay. 

3. The Mission of Genet. Bassett, Federalist System, 84-100; Avery, United 
States, VII, 78-91; Contemporaries, III, 307-311. 

4. The French Declaration of the Rights of Man. Old South Leaflets, VII, 8. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

G. Atherton, Conqueror; Cooper, Afloat and Ashore, Miles Wallingford, and 
Pioneers; S. W. Mitchell, Red City; Kipling, Brother Square Toes, in Reivards and 

Fairies. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

What were the chief problems of the national government under the Federalist 
rdgime? WTiat were the chief triumphs of the Federalists? What were the leading 
features of Hamilton's financial policy? Describe the work of the first Congress. 
What were the leading mistakes of President Washington? How do you account for 
the rise of political parties under Washington? Why are political parties necessary? 
Mention at least three instances of alleged ingratitude to France on the part of the 
United States from 1776 to 1801. Was each justifiable? Was it a mistake for 
Adams to continue the cabinet of Washington? Why? What were some of the accusa- 
tions against Washington? What is nullification? Were there any instances of nulli- 
fication up to 1801? What good purpose was served by the Whisky Rebellion? What 
is a treaty? How does a treaty differ from arbitration? Define "constitutional" and 
"unconstitutional." What was the importance of the Jay treaty? From what sec- 
tions of the country in general and from what classes of society was the Federalist 
party recruited? What is sectionalism in American politics? Do you think Hamilton's 
financial measures would have succeeded if the country had experienced poor crops 
or a financial panic at that time? What does the Genet episode prove ought to be 
the conduct of dii)lomatic representatives in a foreign country? What probably 
suggested to President Washington advising his fellow-citizens to avoid alliances 
with European nations ? 



PART V 
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, 1801-1841 

CHAPTER X\T 
JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY 

NEW PRINCIPLES IN INTERN.\L ADMINISTRATION 

Jefferson came to the presidential chair as the champion of democ- 
racy, in opposition to aristocracy and to conservatism. In a notable 
book on "Democracy and Liberty," an unfriendly critic, The new 
Lecky, from whose "American Revolution" we have ^''^• 
ah-eady quoted, has sneered at democracy as government by the 
"poorest, the most ignorant, the most incapable, who are necessarily 
the most numerous." Yet the formulation of the democratic idea 
of popular participation in government may fairly be looked upon as 
Jefferson's greatest achievement and one of the greatest achievements 
in the whole history of national politics. It was of distinctly more 
value than either the theory of strict construction of the Constitution 
or that of states' rights, the other leading contentions of the Jeffersonian 
party. Jefferson's ideals of democracy, though as old as the colonies 
themselves, were not thoroughly worked into the fabric of national 
life at once but are still in process of progressive application. 

The foremost leader of the Democratic-Republicans was Jefferson 
himself. The Secretary of State, James Madison, who since 1789 
had performed useful services in the House of Represen- Democratic- 
tatives as a member from Virginia, and Albert Gallatin, Republican 
a young Swiss immigrant, who as Secretary of the Treas- 
ury made a record second only to that of Hamilton, were among the 
strong men of the party. 

At his inauguration Jefferson disregarded the precedents of the two 
Federalist Presidents, who at their inauguration had been accom„- 
panied to the capitol in state, and walked with a few friends Jefferson's 
to the simple ceremony. His inaugural address was a inauguration, 
striking document. He pleaded for "a wise and frugal government, 

207 



2o8 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

which shall restrain men frqm injuring one another, shall leave them 
otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improve- 
ment, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has 
earned." The essential principles of good government he summed up 
as follows: "Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or 
persuasion, religious or political: — peace, commerce,.and honest friend- 
ship with all nations, entangling alliances with none: — the support of 
the state governments in all their rights, as the most competent ad- 
ministrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks 
against anti-republican tendencies — the preservation of the general 
government in its constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace 
at home, and safety abroad." 

As a further break with Federalist precedent, Jefferson sent written 

Written messages to Congress instead of appearing before the 

presidential assembled legislators in person, and his example in this 

messages. respect was followed till the presidency of Woodrow 

Wilson. 

The Democratic-Republicans passed few important laws in Con- 
gress. The Alien and Sedition Laws, which by their own provisions 
expired a few years after their enactment, were not re- 
Republican newed; the Naturalization Act was amended by the 

theory and reduction of the term of residence in the countrv required 
practice. . ■' ^ 

of a foreigner before naturalization, from fourteen back 

to the original term of five years, where it still remains; taxes were 
lowered and the size of the navy reduced. The national military 
academy at West Point on the Hudson was established in 1S02. The 
truth is, that when charged with the responsibility of administering 
national affairs, the followers of Jefferson found that their ideal of a 
central government with restricted powers was not practical; and their 
most important measures, such as the purchase of Louisiana and the 
retaliatory acts against Great Britain and France for their insulting 
practices on the sea, were based on a loose construction of the Con- 
stitution and presupposed a strong central government. 

One of the first measures of the new administration was to legislate 
the "midnight judges" out of office by the repeal of the law creating 

the offices to which they had been appointed. The 
The attack . 

on the courts Supreme Court could not be so easily managed. It was 

and its galling to the victorious party that the national tribunal 

was in the hands of Federalist judges, with John Marshall 

as Chief Justice, in a position to wield the power of the court in favor 

of loose construction and a strong central government against their 

own professions of strict construction and states' rights. Early in 



JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY 



209 



1803 came the decision in the case of Mas-bury v. Madison, in which 
the court held that it had the power to declare a law null and void, if 
this law was contrary to the Constitution, and that the court must 

necessarily have this power if it was 
to exercise its function of guarding 
the Constitution as "the supreme 
law of the land." 

The courts of the separate 
states had already exercised the 
power to set aside the The power 
laws of their own leg- ^^ ^^^ <^o"''ts- 
islatures, but the assertion by the 
Supreme Court of the same right 
over the laws of the Congress was 
altogether unprecedented. The 
decision in Marbury v. Madison 
was the Supreme Court's first great 
decision bearing on the powers of 
the various branches of the central 
government, and it gave to the 
court an importance in the govern- 
ment of which the framers of the 
Constitution probably never 
dreamed. The authority once 
assumed the tribunal has successfully maintained against the occa- 
sional opposition both of Congress and of the Executive. Down to 
the present day the national court has declared null and void at 
least twenty-one acts of Congress and two hundred state laws, while 
the state courts are now setting aside as unconstitutional the acts 
of the state legislatures at the rate of from fifty to seventy-five 
annually. 

President Jefferson was incensed at the stand of the court. If the 
doctrine of Marbury v. Madison held, said he, the Constitution "is a 
mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which unsuccessful 
they can twist and shape into any form they please." He impeachment 
believed that Congress and the President had as much ° ®-'" ^^^' 
right as the court to decide on the constitutionality of laws, and that 
the court had no right to force its ideas on either. The House of 
Representatives proceeded to impeach Judge Chase of the Supreme 
Bench before the Senate of the United States, in the hope that by this 
method they might rid themselves of the FederaUst judges one by one 
and appoint Democratic-Republicans in their places. The Senate sat 




John Marshall 



2IO NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

as a court to hear the evidence but voted against removal, and the 
Federalist judges were safe. 

The Democratic-Repubhcan distrust of the courts was reflected 
in several states, which changed the tenure of the judges of the state 
Changes in courts from a continuous term "during good behavior" 
the judiciary to a term limited in duration to a prescribed number of 
years, and changed the method of their selection from 
appointment by the legislature to election by the people. 

THE PURCHASE OF LOUISIANA 

By far the most important event in the first administration of 
Jefferson was the purchase for $15,000,000 of the French territory 
covering the entire Mississippi Valley in the interior of the 
of the continent, from the Mississippi River to the Rocky 

Puriha^e Mountains and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. The 

new area of 875,000 square miles was somewhat larger 
than the original area of 830,000 square miles, with which the coun- 
try started on its independent career in 1783, and included the 
present states of Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and 
Nebraska, and parts of Louisiana, Minnesota, Texas, North and South 
Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. 

Rumors had come from Europe that France, under the rule of 
Napoleon, had embarked on the policy of restoring the colonial empire 
. . of the French in the interior of North America, which she 

Importance i , • . , . 

ofthepos- had given up to the Spaniards in 1763, and that Spain 
the^mouth ^^^ already ceded back to France this vast tract. The 
of the _ vision of the mouth of the Mississippi in the hands of the 
ississippi. strong power of France stirred President Jefferson to 
action. It was down the Mississippi and past the port of New Orleans 
that the settlers of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio found the most 
convenient outlet to a market for their products, as we have already 
seen. To ship these over the mountains to the seaboard was well-nigh 
impossible, so that the right to the free navigation of the Mississippi 
was indispensable to the Westerners. In their interests President Wash- 
ington had made the treaty with Spain in 1795, securing to the Ameri- 
cans of the interior the right to ship their goods past New Orleans to 
the ocean free of duty. Not till they had gained this concession were 
the Westerners entirely loyal to the Union; but now, with a change of 
masters at New Orleans pending, that free outlet to the sea might be 
taken away. The prosperity of the whole Mississippi Valley was 
jeopardized. 

When it was definitely learned that France had acquired Louisiana, 



JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY 211 

Jefferson sent commissioners to Paris to negotiate for the purchase of 
so much of the territory as lay east of the mouth of the Negotiation 
Mississippi, including New Orleans. To their surprise of the 
Napoleon offered to the commissioners to sell to the ^"^*^ 
United States the whole of the vast tract in the interior, and the 
commissioners, the President, and the Senate accepted the offer. Napo- 
leon's willingness to part with Louisiana is to be explained on two 
grounds, first his desire to prevent its falling into the hands of the 
British, who were stronger on the sea than the French, and second, his 
eagerness to add the purchase money to his national treasury for the 
prosecution of his European wars. 

Jefferson acted on the conviction that the mouth of a great river 
should be in the hands of the same nation which controlled its upper 
waters, and that the interior of the continent should Arguments 
belong to the power which controlled the coast. Looking for and 
to the future, he believed in giving to the people the territorial 
opportunity to expand westward. The political opposi- annexation, 
tion to the purchase was confined mainly to the people on the seaboard, 
where there was jealous fear that the West would assume too great 
importance with this vast addition of territory. They put forth the 
argument, first, that the United States had no express right by the 
Constitution to annex new territory, an argument based on strict 
construction turned against the Democratic-Republicans themselves; 
second, that the coast regions could ill afford to lose those of their 
fellow-citizens who might migrate to the new country; and third, that 
the addition of the new territory would make the United States too 
large to govern. This was before the days of the telegraph and the 
railroad, so that this last objection had more weight than might seem 
at the present time. 

The constitutional argument of strict construction was met by the 
loose construction argument that under the general right to make 
treaties there was certainly included the right to make this The Demo- 
particular treatv, for annexation of terriory was one of cratic-Repub- 

, . ' 1 1 1 • 1 • -1 ucan accept- 

the topics most commonly dealt with m treaties between ance of loose 

sovereign nations. Jefferson himself at first felt that construction, 
he was not authorized by the Constitution to make the purchase and 
he wished a constitutional amendment authorizing it, but he finally 
set his scruples aside on the ground that the acquisition represented 
the will of the people, and posterity has approved the step. 

In 1805 Congress divided the French purchase into two territories, 
Orleans in the south and Louisiana in the north. In 18 10 the Supreme 
Court confirmed the right of Congress to govern the annexed terri- 



212 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

tories, declaring that " the power of governing and of legislating for a 
Q • ^ territory is the inevitable consequence of the right to ac- 
of the new quirc and hold territory. Could this position be con- 
territory, tested, the Constitution of the United States declares 
'Congress shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules 
and regulations respecting the territory and other property belonging 
to the United States.' " Orleans was admitted into the Union as the 
state of Louisiana in 1812, against the bitter opposition of New Eng- 
land; but the name of Louisiana Territory continued to be applied to 
the northern part of the purchase. 

From the old French town of St. Louis on the Mississippi, in May, 
1804, two army captains, Meriwether Lewis, President Jefferson's 
The expedi- private secretary, and William Clark, a brother of George 
tion of Lewis Rogers Clark, set out under the auspices of the national 
^ ^ ■ government on a scientific expedition to explore the new 
lands. Forty-five members were included in the party. A journey of 
six months took them two thousand miles up the Missouri to a point 
still within the Louisiana territory, where they pitched their winter 
camp. The next spring brought them to the sources of the Missouri, 
formed by the junction of three small streams, which they promptly 
named Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin; and thence, under the guid- 
ance of an Indian girl, they came over the crest of the Rocky Moun- 
tains into a new country, not contained in the purchase from France, 
where the rivers flowed to the west. Following down one of these, the 
Columbia, they reached the Pacific in November, 1805, and returned 
to St. Louis the following year. 

The expedition enriched science by the discovery of new trees, flow- 
ers, and plants, by the mapping of the courses of unknown rivers, and 
Results of the by the observation and description of the manners, cus- 
expedition. toms, language, and religion of new Indian tribes. As 
a commentary on the white man's treatment of the natives, it was noted 
that the farther from civilization the expedition proceeded, the more 
friendly were the Indians found to be, while the tribes living near the 
white settlements were almost uniformly hostile. The expedition forged 
another link in the chain, which was later to give to the United States 
its hold on the Columbia River country of Oregon, already visited by 
Captain Gray in the Columbia in 1792. 

In 1805-1806, while Lewis and Clark were absent in the Northwest, 

The explora- Lieutenant Zebulon M. Pike of the army explored the 

tions of headwaters of the Mississippi and then turning southward 

reached the Rocky Mountains near the present site of 

Denver and the peak which bears his name. He was captured by 



JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY 213 

Spanish soldiers, conducted through Spanish Texas, and finally released 
in Louisiana. 

The presidential campaign of 1804 came on while President 
Jefferson was at the flood tide of personal popularity, and he was 
re-elected over the Federalist candidate, Charles Cotes- -pj^^ presi- 
worth Pinckney of South Carolina. The vote of 162 to dential cam- 
14 in the electoral colleges showed how thoroughly the ^^^" ° 
nation indorsed the principles of the Democratic-Republicans and 
the policy of territorial expansion. 

Early in Jefferson's second term the West again came into promi- 
nence in connection with the schemes of Aaron Burr. The political 
career of Burr was one of the most unlucky in the history j.^^ conspir- 
of American politics. Although a lawyer of national acy of Aaron 
reputation, he twice failed to reach the goal of his ambi- 
tion, the presidency of the United States in the one instance and in the 
other the governorship of the state of New York. In each case he at- 
tributed his failure to the opposition of Alexander Hamilton. Duelling 
was then a common practice, and although Burr was Vice President of 
the United States he sent a challenge to his rival and in the encounter 
shot him dead. The office of the vice presidency was sadly dis- 
honored. With his ambition fired perhaps by Jefferson's success in 
annexing Louisiana, at the close of his vice presidency Burr plunged 
into a scheme that discredited him still more. He secretly embarked 
on a quasi-military expedition down the Ohio and the Mississippi 
to the southwest, with no one knows what plans; probably he himself 
did not know definitely. He may have hoped to make himself ruler of 
a new state in the Valley of the Mississippi, or to deprive Spain of the 
northern province of Texas and to set himself up as King or Emperor 
of a new nation. Whatever the aim, the undertaking came to an in- 
glorious end. Burr was arrested and tried for treason, but nothing 
was proved against him and he was released; his political career was 
ruined, and he passed the remainder of his ill-starred life in disgrace. 

FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

There were serious foreign complications in Jefferson's administra- 
tion under two different sets of circumstances. President Washing- 
ton's tribute to the pirates of the Mediterranean did not 'v^ra^ with 

prove eft"ective in saving the ships of the United States the pirates 
\ , , • , , . of the Medi- 

from capture and their crews and passengers from im- terranean 

prisonment. The government and sometimes individuals ^^^• 

were called upon to pay additional ransoms of thousands of dollars. 

It was a not uncommon occurrence in the churches of the seaboard 



214 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

for the minister to read a notice of the capture by the pirates of some 
member of the congregation and to call for contributions for his ran- 
som. Even the peaceful Jefiferson wearied at last of submission and 
sent three different squadrons to stop the payments once for all. The 
last of these, under Commodore Preble, worsted the Pasha of Tripoli 
and his pirates so thoroughly that they agreed in 1805 to allow vessels 
flying the flag of the United States to sail unmolested. Promises 
extracted by force proved more effective than those induced by bribes, 
and with the exception of a slight repetition of this show of force to the 
Dey of Algiers a few years later, there was no further need of impressing 
on the Barbary States the lesson thai they must not molest American 
citizens. In addition to the benefits accruing to commerce, was the 
training which the miniature war afforded to the navy of the United 
States. 

The old troubles with the two warring powers of Great Britain and 
France concerning the rights of neutrals on the sea in time of war 

still continued, for the former, in spite of the professions of 
More , . 

trouble over friendship in the Jay treaty, and the latter, in spite of the 

*^^t"ais*^°^ treaty of 1800, persisted in their attacks on the neutral 
The rule of merchantmen of the United States. The Americans by 
1756 eva e . ^j^j^ ^j^^ were employing a shrewd device to elude the 
Rule of 1756, which rule the British invoked to prevent the ships of 
the United States from taking part in the commerce of the French West 
Indies. Goods were brought from the French Islands to the ports of 
the United States, unloaded, and the regular tariff duties paid on them 
at the customhouses; then the cargoes were reloaded and shipped to 
France as American goods. Technically the Rule of 1756 had not been 
violated; practically all knew that it had been violated. The British 
side in the resulting dispute was expressed in the doctrine of the "con- 
tinuous voyage," by which it was held that the American merchantmen 
sailing for France from the West Indies by way of the United States, 
did not accomplish two distinct voyages, but one continuous voyage. 
The British pointed out that at the reloading in the ports of the United 
States the vessels in question were accustomed to receive back again 
most of the tariff duty which they had already paid at the custom- 
house. The Americans, on the other hand, in their doctrine of the 
"broken voyage" insisted that the voyage to France originating in the 
neutral territory of the United States was separate and distinct from 
the voyage between the West Indies and the United States, and that, 
as both voyages were innocent, the ships engaged in them were not 
subject to capture. Backed by the power of a big navy, the British 
insisted on having their way and captured hundreds of the American 



JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY 215 

ships concerned in the trade. Hard as this was for the Americans, 
it could not be expected that Great Britain, which had forced France 
to abandon the carrying trade with the French West Indies, would 
willingly allow its enemy to receive this aid from outside ships and the 
neutral Americans to reap commercial benefit from British victories. 
His Majesty's courts condemned the American vessels guilty of prac- 
ticing the "broken voyage," unless the owners could show that they 
had honorably shipped the goods in question to the United States with 
the intention of having them remain there. As such proof was dif- 
ficult, especially to the suspicious mind of the British court, the Ameri- 
can losses were heavy. 

In 1806-1807, by a series of proclamations or Orders in Council, 
the British stretched the idea of a paper blockade beyond all precedent, 
in their declaration of a blockade against all the coast of Paper 
Europe under the control of France, to be effective against Wockades. 
neutral vessels, unless these vessels, seeking the prohibited ports, first 
called at a British port and there paid duty on their cargoes. Napoleon 
retaliated with the Berlin and Milan Decrees, declaring a blockade of 
all British ports in Europe and ordering the seizure of every vessel 
touching at a British port or suffering herself to be stopped and searched 
by the British. Of all Europe, only Sweden, Russia, and Turkey were 
open to the trade of neutrals. Since the belligerents did not possess 
ships enough to make a pretense of guarding the whole blockaded 
coast, these extensive blockades were not de facto, but existed on paper 
only. The neutral Americans, whose vessels were no longer free to go 
either to British or to French ports, clung to their former contention 
that international law recognized no such thing as a paper blockade, 
and in spite of the restrictions they continued their trade with the 
forbidden ports. 

The procedure of the belligerents in enforcing their contentions was 
exasperating in the extreme to the Americans. The right of the bel- 
ligerents to search and capture neutral ships carrying con- Enforcement 
traband of war or intending to break a blockade began, of the paper 
it was contended, the moment the ship entered upon 
the high seas. Protected by this rule the British hovered off New 
York and other American ports to search all outgoing ships. There 
could be no formal objection to this as long as the arrest, search, and 
seizure took place beyond the three-mile limit, to which a nation's 
sovereignty extends into the sea; but this practical blockade of their 
ports, when they themselves were not parties to the war raging in 
Europe, seemed to the Americans an undue hardship. 

The continued impressment of American citizens by the British 



2i6 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

cruisers added to the ill-will between the two nations. Procedure 
was usually as follows: meeting with an American ship 
impressment of commerce, the British captain would stop her by a 
of American gj^Qj- across her bow, board her, search her, call the crew 
upon deck, inspect them, and without the least show of 
judicial fairness arbitrarily decide that certain members of the crew 
were British subjects and send them off in chains to serve on the 
British ships. It was difficult to distinguish an American from a 
British subject, resembling one another as they did in appearance, 
language, manners, and customs, so that through perfectly natural, 
even if not always willful, mistakes of identification, many an American 
citizen suffered a towering indignity. The statement was made in 
Congress in 1806 that at that time between 2,500 and 3000 Americans 
were performing enforced service in the British navy. Frenchmen 
and Americans could not so easily be mistaken for one another, and 
impressment of American citizens by the French was not so common. 

Evident as was the outrage, it must be admitted that the fortunes 
of the British navy were at this time in a precarious condition. That 
Naturaliza- ^^ ^^^ losing thousands of sailors at a time when the 
tion and ex- services of these were of supreme importance in the 
patnation. struggle with France, was generally admitted, for condi- 
tions were better and wages higher on the American than on the 
British ships. Outside of the United States, too, there was universal 
approbation of the British contention of "once an Englishman, always 
an Englishman," which meant the denial of the right of a British sub- 
ject to divest himself of British citizenship and become a citizen of 
another country. Such a one, sailing under the flag of his adopted 
country and claiming its protection, was still, in the eyes of the British, 
a subject of the King, a deserter liable to capture. The new nation 
of the United States, in need of willing hands to develop its resources, 
was the only prominent power to subscribe to the doctrine of naturaliza- 
tion. Nor was America herself consistent on the question. The 
President, Congress, and the courts on the one hand affirmed that a 
citizen of another country could transfer his allegiance to the United 
States, but, on the other hand, they refused to recognize the right of a 
citizen of the United States to expatriate himself, that is, to become a 
citizen of another country. The right of expatriation was not recog- 
nized by the United States till 1868. 

Beyond the question whether or not Great Britain retained her hold 
The right of on her citizens after they were formally adopted as citi- 
impressment. 2ens by another nation, there was the question whether 
or not she could rightfully take by force from the deck of an Ameri- 



JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY 217 

can ship those of her citizens who made no pretense to naturali- 
zation in the United States. The American shipmasters contended 
that they were within their rights when they availed themselves of the 
services of the sailors of every nation, and that so long as these men 
remained on an American ship they were under the protection of the 
flag of the United States and could not be taken away by the officials 
of another nation. Moreover, according to the American claims, the 
deck of an American ship was American soil, on which British officers 
had no right to exercise any authority whatsoever. Both these claims 
the British flatly denied. 

Except for its refusal to recognize the right of expatriation, the 
United States, defender of the rights of neutrals in time of war, was 
advocating principles of international law so far in advance ^j^^ united 
of the times that the rest of the world did not accept her States vindi- 
position for another half century. The delayed acceptance, 
when it did come, was a pleasing vindication of the United States for 
the stand which she had taken in a trying crisis. 

On one occasion in 1807 a British ship, the man-of-war Leopard, 
fired on an American warship, the Chesapeake, and impressed four of 
her seamen into the British service. In the excitement of p^^ aggra- 
the moment President Jefferson might have begun war on yated case of 
Great Britain with the enthusiastic support of the whole ^^P'"^^^™®" • 
nation, but he took other counsel. 

Out of his desire for peace the President gave his consent to the 

Non-Importation Act of Congress, to bring Great Britain to terms, but 

this old weapon of pre-revolutionary days made no impres- , 

sion on the unfriendly British. At the bidding of the first two 

President, the minister to Great Britain, Tames Monroe, polices m 
' . , . . , the crisis, 

attempted to relieve the situation by a treaty, after the 

fashion of the Jay treaty. Besides containing no renunciation by the 

British of the right of impressment, paper blockade, and the other 

objectionable practices on the sea, the Monroe treaty went so far as 

to dictate what duties Congress should levy on the importations from 

the West Indies in order to constitute the voyage from the United States 

to France a new voyage, without infraction of the Rule of 1756, and 

President Jefferson refused to send the treaty to the Senate for 

ratification. 

Congress, still clinging to the idea of peace, in December, 1807, 

passed the Embargo Act at the suggestion of the President, to starve 

the belligerents into respectful treatment of American The Embargo 

commerce. Under the provisions of this act, which for- ■'^'^^• 

bade American ships leaving domestic ports for the ports of foreign 



2i8 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

countries without the special permission of the President, all shipping 
between the United States and Great Britain and between the United 
States and France practically came to an end. Those two countries, 
however, got along well enough without the American food products, 
and the most disastrous effects of the restriction were felt in the 
United States itself, where thousands of sailors were thrown out of 
work and hundreds of ship owners ruined. Earlier, when the ships 
had been free to sail at their own risk, the owners had made money 
in spite of the numerous captures at the hands of the British and 
the French; and business had been heavy, as maybe judged from the 
fact that the value of the exports from the United States advanced 
from $26,000,000 in 1793 to $108,000,000 in 1807, the year before the 
embargo. The commercial classes preferred that their ships should 
continue to run the risk of capture, since those that got through in 
safety brought enormous profits. Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and 
Connecticut denounced the embargo and the measures taken to secure 
its enforcement as oppressive and unconstitutional, while Connecti- 
cut, bordering close on nullification, refused the aid of its state militia 
to the national administration for carrying out the act. 

After a year of dissatisfaction and hardship on the seaboard the 
embargo was repealed. From the point of view of the Democratic- 
The repeal Republican doctrine of strict construction there had never 
of the act. been any direct constitutional authority to institute it in 
the first place, for only by the loosest kind of construction could the 
power to kill foreign commerce, involved in the idea of an embargo, be 
derived from the constitutional power of Congress to regulate foreign 
commerce. 

While the dissatisfaction over the embargo was at its height the 
country was called upon to elect a new president. The Democratic- 
The presi- Republicans succeeded in maintaining their hold on the 
dentiai eiec- government in spite of their unpopular handling of the 
°° ° * commercial situation. In a conscious attempt to 
strengthen the precedent in favor of two terms only for the executive. 
President Jefferson refused a third nomination at the hands of his party. 
Said he: " General Washington set the example of voluntary retirement 
after eight years. I shall follow it. And a few more precedents will 
oppose the obstacle of habit to any one after a while, who shall endeavor 
to extend his term." The Secretary of State, James Madison, who was 
looked upon as the President's candidate, received 122 votes and the 
election, to 47 for Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, who was for a third 
time the Federalist candidate. 



JEFFERSONIAN DEMOCRACY 219 

GENER.AL REFERENCES 

H. Adams, United States, I-IV; McMaster, United States, II and III; Channing, 
Jrffcrsoiiiui! System; Contemporaries, III, 344-407; Morse, Thomas Jejferson; A. C. 
Laut, Pathfinders; Grinnell, Trails. 

SPECI.\L TOPICS 

1. Purchase of Louisiana. Ogg, Opening of the Mississippi, 495-539; McMas- 
ter, United States, II, 625-635, and III, 1-41 ; Contemporaries, III, 363-385; H. Adams, 
United States, II, 25-135; Epochs, IV, 140-154; Old South Leaflets, V, 105, and VI, 128; 
Roosevelt, Winning of the West, IV, 258-307; Bruce, Expansion, 24-50. 

2. Aaron Burr. McMaster, United States, III, 42-88; H. Adams, United States, 
II, 160-191, and III, 219-344; W. F. McCaleb, Aaron Burr Conspiracy; Epochs, IV, 
155-158, and 180-185; Hill, Decisive Battles of the Law, 27-65; Roosevelt, 
Winning of tJie West, IV, 258-307. 

3. The Expedition of Lewis and Clark. A. C. Laut, Pathfinders, 307-333; 
Thwaites, Ed., Journals of the I^eivis and Clark Expedition; Grinnell, Trails, 154- 
252; Epochs, IV, 159-169; N. Brooks, First Across the Continent; Roosevelt, Win- 
ning of the West, IV, 308-343. 

4. The Embargo Act. McMaster, United States, III, 276-338; H. Adams, 
United States, TV, 152-290, 317-360, and 432-454; Contemporaries, III, 403-410; 
Epochs, IV, 201-204. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERLAL 

Hale, Man Without a Country, and Philip Nolan's Friends; M. E. Seawell, Decatur 
and Somers; J. K. Paulding, John Bull and Brother Jonathan; Irving, Knickerbocker 
History of New York; C. F. Pidgin, Blcnnerhassetl. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

WTiy was the Democratic-Republican party in Jefferson's time hostile to the courts? 
State the differences between the Federalists and the Democratic-Republicans. Why 
was it that the Democratic-Republicans passed few important laws in Congress? 
How do you account for the fact that the United States consented to pay tribute to 
the pirates of the Mediterranean? Give the British side of the dispute over the rights 
of neutrals on the sea in time of war. Why did the Embargo Act fail? Explain what 
is international law. How does it grow ? What were the mistakes of President 
Jefferson? What were the leading issues in current politics before the voters in the 
presidential campaigns of 1804 and 1808? 



CHAPTER XVII 
THE WAR OF 1812 



The political 
leaders in 
President 
Madisons 
administra- 
tion. 



PRELIMINARIES OF WAR 

Although James Madison had been almost continuously in the 
public eye since the opening of the War of Independence, and although 
during that long time he had rendered distinguished pub- 
lic service, now that he had reached the supreme goal of 
political preferment his administration was not the suc- 
cess that his admirers had anticipated. He was a strong 
thinker, one of the most intellectual of American Presi- 
dents, but in the crisis, when war with Great Britain was impending 

and relations with France were in a 
precarious condition, his administra- 
tive ability proved hardly equal to the 
strain. His cabinet, too, with the ex- 
ception of Albert Gallatin and James 
Monroe, was distinctly weak. Per- 
haps the most prominent man of. the 
period was the eloquent young Ken- 
tuckian, Henry Clay, who held the 
post of Speaker of the House of Rep- 
resentatives. Born of poor parents in 
Virginia in 1777, Clay studied law, and 
at the age of nineteen "went west" 
into Kentucky to seek his fortune. 
His voice and his eloquence were his 
fortune, for he will always be remem- 
bered as Kentucky's greatest orator 
and one of the most persuasive speak- 
ers that ever appeared on the floor of 
Congress. He was possessed of great energy and capacity for leader- 
ship, and held a foremost position in the councils of his party almost 
from the day of his advent into national politics. He was the idol of 
the West, their first great statesman. With him in Congress were 
John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, another young man destined to 
prominence, and the aged pioneer, John Sevier of Tennessee. 




James AI.vdison' 



THE WAR OF 1812 



221 



Great Britain and France were still at war, and each power still 
persisted in infiicting on the neutral commerce of the Mo^e 
United States the same outrages that had caused trouble trouble with 
in the days of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. At tain and 
the very end of Jefferson's last term of office Congress re- l^rance, 
luctantly repealed the Embargo Act and passed another superseding 
it, known as the Non-Intercourse 
Act, by the terms of which trade was 
to be open to every nation but Great 
Britain and France; and the Presi- 
dent was empowered to resume com- 
mercial relations with either one of 
these powers which should first give 
up its objectionable practices. Noth- 
ing, however, was accomplished by 
this measure. In another year the 
restrictions of the act expired, and in 
a new law, known as "Macon's Bill 
No. 2," Congress provided that if 
one of the offending nations shouhl 
give up the abusive practices and 
the other should not, the restric- 
tions of the Non-Intercourse Act 
were to be revived by the President 
against the nation still offending. 

For a short time it seemed as if 
Great Britain were ready to desist. 
Her minister at Washington agreed 

to stop the attacks, and hundreds of ships, laden with full cargoes, 
put to sea. The British government promptly repudiated Misunder- 
the act of the minister, rejected the treaty which he had standing and 
signed contrary to instructions, called him home in dis- ^^^'^ ^^^' 
grace, and ordered the seizure of the unlucky ships. The Emperor of 
France went even farther. By the Bayonne Decree, i8o8, he con- 
fiscated all the American ships arriving in the ports of France, on the 
assumption that they must be British ships illegally flying the Ameri- 
can flag since no American vessels could legally reach France. By 
the Rambouillet Decree, issued two years later. Napoleon sequestered 
over a hundred more American ships, in retaliation, as he said, for the 
Non-Intercourse Act of the United States. 

Indignation at both Great Britain and France was at fever heat. 
It was plain that the troubles of the United States were bound to end 




Henry Clay 



222 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

in war either with one nation or with the other. After twenty years 
War of harsh treatment and at the same time twenty years of 

inevitable. national growth, the patience of the country was at an 
end. No longer would the peace-at-any-price policy of the com- 
mercial seaboard satisfy the young Americans of the West, who felt 
that war was a necessity if the national honor was to be maintained, 
and that commercial profits must no longer be allowed to dictate na- 
tional policy. 

Feeling against Great Britain was increased in the West by the 
belief that British emissaries were inspiring outbreaks of the Indians. 
Renewed ^^^ Indians in the Northwest Territory, after their 

trouble with defeat by General Wayne in 1794, had remained quiet for 
e n lans. almost a score of years, when suddenly a new Indian 
leader arose in the person of Tecumseh, who formed the ambitious 
plan of uniting the Indians of the various tribes in one grand 
assault against the encroaching whites. William Henry Harrison, 
Governor of Indiana Territory, correctly scented the Indian unrest, 
and in 181 1 engaged the savages in battle at Tippecanoe on the 
Wabash River in northern Indiana. Though, like Harmar and St. 
Clair before him, he allowed himself to be surprised, he retrieved him- 
self and won a victory. The fighting began in the dim light of early 
morning and raged at the very tent doors of the soldiers. Sixty of 
the whites were killed and more than one hundred wounded; the losses 
of the savages were unknown, but their defeat was decisive and their 
power completely broken. The victory took place several hundred 
miles farther west than that of Wayne, showing that the whites were 
pushing on in their march in that direction. The same scenes were 
enacted on the frontier of the Southwest a little later, where an Indian 
massacre near Mobile Bay was promptly avenged by the whites under 
the leadership of Andrew Jackson. 

Whether well founded or not, the belief was general in the United 
States that the British and the Indians stood together as allies and that 
the British were in part responsible for these uprisings. 

THE SECOND WAR OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE 

The gathering spirit of hostility to Great Britain invaded the Con- 
gress that assembled in December, 181 1. Speaker Clay, the most 
War declared ^^'dent "war hawk" of all, so composed the committees in 
on Great the House of Representatives as to put the war party in 

" ^°' complete control in that body; and the Senate was of the 

same mind. An act was passed to increase the size of the regular army, 
the President was authorized to enlist the services of fifty thousand 



THE WAR OF 1812 223 

volunteers, and an embargo, like that of 1808, was laid for ninety days 
on foreign commerce. The formal declaration of war against Great 
Britain, which passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 79 to 
49 and the Senate by a vote of 19 to 13, was signed by the President June 
18, 181 2. The existence of a strong minority in opposition, centered 
mainly in commercial New England, together with the weakened con- 
dition of the army and navy under Jefferson's policy of retrenchment, 
and the diminished national revenue did not constitute favorable 
auspices under which to enter upon a foreign war; but "young America" 
had its way and the nation was committed to the conflict. 

One day before the declaration of war by the United States, 
Great Britain repealed the obnoxious Orders in Council, by which the 

blockade of the French ports had been declared, but in 

. The TQVQ3I 

the absence of telegraphic communications with Europe of the Brit- 

the news of the repeal was not received in the United ish Orders 

'■ in Council. 

States till after Congress had taken the fatal step. 

So far as the disregard of the rights of neutrals on the sea in time of 
war was concerned, France was to all intents and purposes an aggressor 
as well as Great Britain. Both nations had impressed Reasons for 
American seamen into their service, and both had dis- the choke of • 
regarded the American contentions concerning the rights the national 
of neutrals, but in each case the British were the greater e°emy. 
offenders. From the beginning of trouble in 1793 over nine hundred 
American ships had been seized by the British and only about five hun- 
dred and fifty by the French. The party of Jefferson and Madison, 
moreover, had always had a fondness for France, and there still rankled 
bitter memories of the War of Independence, so that from sentiment as 
well as from the extent of the injuries received, choice fell upon Great 
Britain as the national enemy. In the West, too, there was a hope 
that Canada might be wrested from Great Britain, as the thirteen 
colonies of the seaboard had desired in the days of the Revolution. 
War with the British offered opportunity for invasion of the enemy's 
territory on this side of the Atlantic, whereas in a war with France 
the enemy would have been more difficult to reach. 

Speaker Clay in the House of Representatives enumerated the 
causes of the appeal to arms as follows: the attitude of Great Britain 
toward neutral commerce, the impressment of American Enumeration 
seamen, the instigation of the Indians to hostilities, and of the causes 
the refusal to give indemnities for the injuries the Ameri- ° * ^ ^^' 
cans had received. He openly confessed his desire to conquer Canada. 
James Monroe, Secretary of State, made an official declaration that 
6257 citizens of the United States had been impressed by the British, 



224 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



and "6257" became a popular watchword of the war party. The 
Federalists placed the number or cases of actual impressment of 
American seamen at 156. 

The United States repeated its policy of 1775 and endeavored at 
the outset to wage an aggressive war and to capture Canada. The 

first army of invasion,, under General Van Rensselaer, 
year of the reached the Canadian side of the Niagara River, where 
th^'^iand'^ it was turned back at the battle of Queenstown Heights, 

and the second, under General Smyth, which reached the 
same river, suffered a like fate. In the west, at Detroit, General Hull, 




SCALE OF MILE? 



Operations Along the Can.adian Border 



who had seen service in the War of the Revolution and was now far 
too old for active command, surrendered his post to the British without 
a shot, for the purpose, he said later, of saving the women and children 
from the scalping knife of the Indians. He was tried by court martial, 
convicted of cowardice, and sentenced to death, but was pardoned 
by the President. 

A glorious beginning on the sea was made by the Americans in a 
OM. £ . series of four victories, the most notable of which was that 

The first r ^ ^ • • \ /-^ • tt n r /-^ 

year of the of the ConsMutton under Captam Hull, a nephew of Gen- 
th"s7a°° ^^^1 ^^1^' ^^^^ ^^^ Guerriere off the Gulf of the St. Law- 
rence. Seventy-nine British were lost in the encounter 
and their ship was completely wrecked, while the Americans lost in 



THE WAR OF 1812 225 

killed and wounded only fourteen. "A small affair it might appear 
among the world's battles," says one historian; "it took but a half 
an hour, but in that one half hour the United States of America rose 
to the rank of a first class power." An Englishman is reported to 




U. S. Frigate Constitution — "Old Ironsides" 

have said in Parliament, "It cannot but be too deeply felt that the 
sacred spell of the invincibility of the British navy is broken." The 
navy of the United States at this time numbered seventeen ships, 
while Great Britain had over one thousand. 

In the autumn of 181 2 the country went through its first presidential 
election in time of war. President Madison was renominated by his 
party, though it was charged that he secured this honor 
by a surrender of his own principles to those of the war presidential 
party in the House of Representatives, headed by Speaker ^.'ection m 
Clay and John C. Calhoun. DeWitt Clinton of New 
York ran on an Independent Democratic-Republican ticket, with 
the indorsement of the Federalists. The result was 128 votes for 
Madison and 89 for Clinton. Every northern seaboard state as far 
south as Maryland, that is, the commercial states, voted against the 
President, and the agricultural states of the South and the West for 
him. Vermont and Pennsylvania separated themselves from the 
rest of the North and gave their votes to Madison. 

On the ocean, in the second year of the war, the American vessels 



2 26 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

were gradually bottled up by the superior numbers of the enemy's 
The second navy; but Commodore (then Commander) Perry, by a 
year. characteristic piece of American daring, won a victory 

at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, September lo, 1813. Both the British 
and the Americans by this time realized that the possession of Canada 
and possibly that of the Northwest Territory of the United States 
largely depended on the control of Lake Erie; and the two fleets, 
about evenly matched, met to decide the issue. The American fleet 
of nine vessels was gathered and equipped at Erie, Pennsylvania, some 
of the ships having been growing trees in the forest only a few months 
before. Perry had never been in action, but he succeeded in defeating 
the British; and he fired the hearts of his countrymen by his laconic 
dispatch, "We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two 
brigs, one schooner, and one sloop." 

The victorious fleet later conveyed an army under General Harri- 
son across Lake Erie to Canada, where a fierce land battle was fought 
Success and against the combined British and Indian forces on the 
failure in Thames River. The great Tecumseh, who had joined 

Cana a. j^-^ jj^^jjg^j^ forces to those of the British as soon as the 

war was declared, was killed, the British defeated, Detroit won back, 
and the Northwest Territory rendered secure. Attempts to invade 
Canada from New York State again failed. 

The early months of the year 1814 were marked by the overthrow 
of Napoleon in Europe and the release of thousands of British veterans 
The third for service in America. There were two indecisive con- 
y«^' flicts in July on the Canadian side of the Niagara River 

at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, after which the British, encouraged 
by the arrival of reenforcements from across the Atlantic, embarked 
on a bold offensive campaign by an invasion of the United States. 
They landed on the coast of Maine, the eastern part of which they 
occupied till the end of the war, and in August they made a dash up 
the Chesapeake Bay and the Potomac River. The capital city of 
Washington was taken and Baltimore threatened. President Madison 
and the cabinet were forced to flee in haste before the invaders to 
escape capture. Such priceless treasures as Stuart's portrait of 
Washington and the original draft of the Declaration of Independence 
were saved only by the wit of Mrs. Madison. Some of the official 
records were carried to places of safety by the officers of the govern- 
ment, but many fell into the hands of the British and were destroyed. 
The White House, the Capitol, and other public buildings were burned. 
Tradition has it that the British commander mounted the Speaker's 
chair in the House of Representatives and in mock imitation of the 



THE WAR OF 1812 



227 




SCALE OF MILES 



Operations around Washington 



proceedings of that body put the question to his delighted men, 
"Shall this harbor of Yankee democracy be burned?" after which the 
building was fired. All was done under 
the direction and in the presence of com- 
manding ofificers, who could hardly allege 
military necessity for their acts. The British 
defended their vandalism by the claim that 
they were but just revenge for the destruc- 
tion of thecapitol buildings of Upper Canada 
at York (Toronto) by the Americans in 1813. 
Shortly before the enemy fell back from their 
attempt on Baltimore a young American 
lawyer, Francis Scott Key, was detained 
overnight by the British, to whom he had 
gone to seek the release of a friend held as 
a prisoner. In the morning, beholding his 
country's flag still flying over Fort McHenry 
in Baltimore, he wrote the national anthem, 
"The Star Spangled Banner." 

The force of invasion was felt in two more places. Less than one 
month after the sack of Washington Sir George Prevost, with a British 
force somewhat less than that of Burgoyne thirty-seven 
years before, marched south from the Valley of the St. the British 
Lawrence over Burgoyne's old route, in a determined r^^^^f- 
effort to cut the United States into two parts, to separate 
the now half-hearted New England states from the more enthusiastic 
West and South. He was supported by a formidable fleet on Lake 
Champlain. His first, and as it proved, the decisive clash with the 
Americans came on September 11, a year and one day after Perry's 
victory on Lake Erie, and the victory of the American Captain Mac- 
donough, only thirty years old, at the head of the little fleet on Lake 
Champlain, in the harbor of Plattsburg, was quite as brilliant as 
that of Perry. The ships of the foe were larger, more numerous, and 
better equipped than those of their opponents; yet after a battle of less 
than three hours they were forced to strike their colors. Prevost 's 
army on the same day fought an indecisive land battle near the scene 
of the naval struggle, and then retreated back to Canada. 

The last battle of the war and the last attempt of the enemy to 
invade the soil of the United States occurred on January ^j^^ yjctoi-,^ 
8, 1815, at New Orleans, where the British veterans from at New 
the wars against Napoleon were met in a terrific battle ''^^'^s- 
by the frontiersmen of the Southwest under Andrew Jackson. The 



228 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 







SCALE OF MILES 



British charged impetuously over the flat open country, and of their 
force of six thousand lost their leader, General Pakenham, and two 
thousand one hundred and thirty-seven men, while the Americans, 
with a smaller force, from 
behind their hastily con- 
structed intrenchmentSjlost 
seventy-one. The stake of 
the battle was nothing less 
than the possession of the 
Louisiana country, and as 
the savior of this vast do- 
main Andrew Jackson won 
a secure place in the hearts 
of his countrymen. 

The opposition of the 
New Englanders to the war, 
The commer- like their oppo- 
ciaiopposi- sition to the 

tion of New 

England to Lmbargo Act 

the war. j^ l8o8, was 

chiefly commercial in its 
motive, for war and em- 
bargo alike tended to di- 
minish the profits of their commerce on the sea. The $26,000,000 of 
exports of the year 1793, which had reached $108,000,000 in 1807, fell 
to $7,000,000 in 1814. To recompense themselves the ship owners 
took to privateering, just as they had during the War of the Revo- 
lution; and they contrived to bring back to the home ports almost 
two thousand British commercial vessels as prizes. This, however 
was a game that two could play, and it is quite certain that the 
American losses in privateering equaled their gains. 

The dissatisfied spirit of New England was manifested by the 
militia of Massachusetts, who refused to march at the command of the 

_,. . President; by the several state legislatures, which passed 

Other phases ' ■' ..... ... ^ , 

of New laws to harass the national admmistration m the conduct 

opp^oshion ^^ ^^^ ^^^' ^^^ ^^ ^^^ people themselves, who refused to 
lend their money to the government in the crisis as 
rapidly as the war leaders desired. To the national loan of $11,- 
000,000, authorized by Congress in 181 2, the New Englanders, though 
possessed of a large part of the wealth of the country, subscribed only 
$1,000,000. Still they furnished more money than the less populous 
states which urged the war, more men than was their proportionate 



lU 20 iO 60 

Expedition against New Orle.ans 



THE WAR OF 1812 229 

share, and the hardships of the war, such as depredations on the 
coast, and damage to shipping, came chiefly upon them. 

In the secret Hartford Convention of 1814, delegates from the 
five New England states debated plans for further resistance to 
the national government and sent commissioners to lay The Hartford 
their grievances before President and Congress. "The Convention, 
acts of Congress in violation of the Constitution are absolutely void," 
said their remonstrance; "states which have no common umpire must 
be their own judges and execute their own decisions." The same 
spirit had cropped out in New England at the time of the Louisiana 
purchase, the Embargo Act of 1807, and the admission of Louisiana 
into the Union as a state; and in no other section of the country had the 
theory of states' rights been more ardently advanced up to that time. 
Before the commissioners of 1814 arrived in Washington to perform 
their unpatriotic mission, the enthusiasm aroused by Jackson at New 
Orleans rendered the movement unpopular and plunged its leaders 
into disgrace, and the conclusion of peace served further to discredit 
the movement. 

The country was still rejoicing over Jackson's victory, when the 
news arrived from Europe that on the day before Christmas, 18 14, 
two weeks before the battle of New Orleans, a treaty of j^^ treaty 
peace had been signed at Ghent in Belgium by the repre- of peace at 
sentatives of the two warring powers. Neither party ^° ' 
gained territory by the agreement and neither paid indemnity to the 
other; the British did not open their home ports nor those in the West 
Indies to the commerce of the United States; they did not renounce 
the right of impressment, and they refused to admit error in their 
treatment of neutral commerce on the sea; but peace, the one thing 
gained in the treaty, was grateful to all. 

Time's vindication of the Americans, after the treaty of peace, was 
not long withheld. No more cases of impressment of American seamen 
by British men-of-war have been recorded. In 1815, vindication 
shortly after the treaty of peace, in a "convention of of the United 
commerce and navigation" Great Britain opened her ^ ^^" 
home ports, and fifteen years later those in the British West Indies, 
to the trading vessels of the United States. More than forty years 
later, in 1856, in common with France and other European states, 
she subscribed to the following rules of international law, enunciated 
at Paris, all of which represent the position of the United States in 
the days of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison: "First, the 
neutral flag covers enemy's goods, with the exception of contraband of 
war; second, neutral goods, with the exception of contraband of war. 



230 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

are not liable to capture under enemy's flag; third, blockades, in order 
to be binding, must be effective — that is to say, maintained by a force 
sufficient really to prevent access to the coast of the enemy." In 
these rules of Paris the subscribing nations also gave up privateering. 
The Americans have likewise been vindicated in their stand on impress- 
ment. The nations now uniformly follow the principle that the deck 
of a ship is to be regarded as the soil of the country whose flag it flies, 
and that the flag protects the sailors under it. The leading nations 
also now accept naturalization and expatriation. 

THE WAVE OF NATION.VLISM AFTER THE WAR 

Most writers agree in characterizing the war of 1812-1815 as the 
"Second War of American Independence." Its results in foreign 

affairs were happy in two respects. First, it freed the 
the war in commerce of the United States on the seas from inter- 
foreign ference by European powers; and second, it marked the 

end of any close connection between the politics of the 
United States and the affairs of Europe. Henceforth national develop- 
ment was to proceed along independent lines, apart from the rest of 
the world. 

Striking changes were taking place in domestic politics. The 
Democratic-Republicans emerged from the war in a dominant position 
Changes in poUtically, but with the principles of their opponents 
domestic adopted as their own. The Federalists, discredited by 

po ics. their attitude in regard to the war, were fast losing 

standing as a party. Their rank and file went over to the Democratic- 
Republicans, bringing to the latter ideas of a strong national govern- 
ment in conflict with Jefferson's position of limited national powers. 
This tendency of the Democratic-Republicans toward nationalism was 
increased by the responsibilities of government. Just as Jefferson 
had forsaken his principles of strict construction in the emergencies of 
administration, so his party now exercised powers which, as an opposi- 
tion party, it had resisted the right of the Federalists to exercise. The 
leading measures of the fourteenth Congress (1815-1817) revealed 
the strength of these newer tendencies in the ruling party. 

The first important act of this Congress was to set up the Second 
Bank of the United States, to take the place of the First Bank of the 

United States, which had been allowed to pass out of 
Bank of the existence at the expiration of its charter in 181 1, killed 
St^te^ by Democratic-Republican votes. Without the aid of the 

national institution, the finances of the country during 
the war went from bad to worse, and banking business fell into the 



THE WAR OF 1812 231 

hands of more than one hundred new banks chartered by the states. 
Under ihe inharmonious and often unsound banking laws of the sepa- 
rate states, the new banks issued their notes for circulation as money 
just as had the bank of the United States, but whereas the notes of 
the latter, with coin back of them in the vaults of the bank, could be 
turned into coin at any time and hence circulated everywhere at their 
face value, the notes of the smaller banks, with little or no gold back 
of them, could not usually be turned into coin at the option of the 
holder and fluctuated in value like the paper money of Revolutionary 
days. Things came to such a pass before the peace of 1815 that all 
the state banks outside of Massachusetts formally refused to redeem 
any of their notes in coin. 

In this strait and under the spell of the nationalizing influences of 
the war, the Democratic-Republicans took the step, which five years 
earlier they had refused to take, of chartering the Second Nature of 
Bank of the United States. In most respects the new the new 
bank was like its predecessor. Its capital stock was 
$35,000,000 as against $10,000,000 formerly; it received the govern- 
ment money on deposit and loaned it out at interest, and its notes, 
well secured by coin, circulated among the people at par, and were 
acceptable everywhere. A disturbing element from which the first 
bank had not sufi"ered, was the existence of the state banks, ever 
jealous for their separate rights and privileges and ready to harass the 
larger institution at every turn. 

Manufacturing industries had been struggling to establish them- 
selves since the beginning of the Federal government, and now at the 
close of the war they were profoundly affected by the £gect of the 
changed conditions. The hopes of Washington, Hamil- waronmanu- 
ton,and the Federalists that they might build up manu- "°^' 

facturing in the United States by a protective tariff had been based 
largely on their knowledge of conditions in Great Britain at that time. 
In the industrial revolution which had set in in that country about 
1760, manufacturing had made rapid strides. A series of great inven- 
tions furthered its progress. The most fundamental of all was the 
steam engine, invented by James Watt in 1769 and rapidly applied to 
all branches of manufacturing. Through the joint work of Har- 
greaves, Arkwright, and Crompton the old-fashioned domestic spin- 
ning wheel for the spinning of yarn was supplanted by machinery 
which would spin several thousand threads at once. Cartwright in- 
vented a power loom to do away with weaving by hand. As a result 
of these inventions the British rapidly developed from an agricultural 
into a manufacturing nation. 



232 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

In spite of strict laws passed in Parliament to prevent the exporta- 
tion of the wonder-working machinery from Great Britain, plans 

_. and models got through to the United States, and Samuel 

The new < i r i r • r i 

processes of Slater, the father of American manufactures,' set up 

ingln the"*^' ^^^ ^^^*- Complete cotton spinning machinery in the 

United United States at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, in 1789. 

With a supply of raw material close at hand in the cotton 

fields of the Southern States, there was every reason to hope that the 

United States would as speedily turn to cotton manufacturing as had 

Great Britain. The new tariff after 1789 was expected to encourage 

such a tendency. 

The profits of the neutral commerce on the seas during the wars 
in Europe temporarily retarded the development of manufacturing in 
The indus- the United States, but the pendulum began to swing in the 
trial revoiu- opposite direction with the Embargo Act of 1807, the Non- 
United Intercourse Act, "Macon's Bill No. 2," and the War of 
States. 1812-1815. Floating capital, effectually shut out from 
neutral commerce and under the necessity of finding some form 
of investment, turned to manufacturing. Now began in earnest the 
industrial revolution in the United States. In 1803 there were five 
cotton factories in the United States, equipped with a few thousand 
spindles, and in 1808 fifteen factories with 8000 spindles. In 181 1 the 
number of spindles had reached 80,000 and in 181 5, 500,000. Whereas 
in 1803 only 1000 bales of cotton were consumed in these factories, 
the consumption in 181 5 reached 90,000 bales and the value of the 
manufactured product was estimated at $24,000,000. In the first 
factories the spinning was done by machinery and the weaving by hand. 
Cartwright's power loom for weaving was first installed in the United 
States by Francis C. Lowell, in his factory in Waltham, Massachusetts, 
in 181 1. The development of woolen factories was hampered by the 
lack of good domestic wool; yet the value of the woolen goods made 
in the new factories for the year 181 5 was $19,000,000. In a few 
years $50,000,000 had been invested in cotton and woolen manufactur- 
ing alone. Iron mills also sprang up, especially in Pennsylvania. 

The extent of the industrial revolution in the United States was 
reflected in the rapid growth of new centers of population, as capital 
New manu- turned from ocean commerce to manufacturing. The 
facturing prosperity of Newport, Rhode Island, Salem and New- 

buryport, Massachusetts, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 
and Hallowell, Maine, with their seafaring population, their tra- 
ditions of the sea, and their stately mansions, now began slowly 
to decline before the rising importance of the new factory centers, 



THE WAR OF 1812 



233 



such as Providence, Rhode Island, Fall River, Lowell, and Lawrence, 
Massachusetts, Manchester, New Hampshire, and Lewiston, Maine. 
In most instances the new industrial activities were centered on the 
streams of New England, where the falls and swift currents furnished 
cheap and abundant power. 

While the manufactures of Great Britain were excluded from the 
United States by unfriendly commercial relations and then by war, 
the newly established American factories had a monopoly .. 

of the home market and thrived accordingly. Then peace industries" 
let down the bars and overwhelmed the "infant Indus- f^ctive^ta/iff 
tries" with a flood of cheap British goods. In two years 
the value of importations rose from $13,000,000 to $147,000,000. 
The cheap foreign goods 
were acceptable to the 
masses of the people, but 
to the manufacturers they 
spelled ruin. The necessity 
of protecting the "infant 
industries" was apparent; 
and this, as well as the rais- 
ing of an additional reve- 
nue to discharge the war 
debt of $80,000,000, was 
the aim of the tariff law of 
18 1 6. The principle of the 
protective tariff, once em- 
braced by the Federalists 
and opposed by the Demo- 
cratic-Republicans, was now 
adopted by the latter in 
their new devotion to na- 
tional supervision of the 
various interests of the 
country. 

The invention of the cotton gin, or engine, by Eli Whitney in 1793 
brought about a sudden increase in the supply of raw material, which 
greatly facilitated the growth of cotton manufacturing. The cotton 
Whitney, a young graduate of Yale College, went to ^"^• 
South Carolina as a school-teacher. Noticing the slaves picking the 
seed out of the cotton, each one succeeding in cleaning a pound or so 
a day, he set his Yankee ingenuity to the task of devising a method of 
performing the work with greater rapidity, and produced a machine 




Whitney's Cotton Gin 



234 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

by the aid of which a single negro could clean three hundred pounds 
of cotton in one day. In the year 1784 the country exported but a 
few thousand pounds of cotton, but ten years after the invention 
of the gin, the annual exports reached 50,000,000 pounds. The cotton 
crop of 85,000,000 pounds in 1810 reached 160,000,000 pounds in 1820. 
Whitney derived little financial return from the gin, yet seldom has a 
single invention exerted greater influence, both economic and political. 
The way was open for the cotton growing industry to expand almost 
indefinitely, while that of cotton manufacturing was sure of an increas- 
ing supply of raw material. The cotton planters of the entire South, 
the cotton manufacturers of England and New England, profited 
by the invention to the extent of millions of dollars; and with Watts, 
Hargreaves, Arkwright, Crompton, and Cartwright, Whitney was 
numbered among the benefactors of the race for making possible a 
cheap fabric for clothing. At the same time, the cotton gin, as we 
shall see, fastened negro slavery more securely upon the Southern 
States and encouraged the spread of slavery to newly forming states 
in the lower Mississippi Valley. 

Along with their establishment of a national bank and the encour- 
agement which they gave to manufacturing enterprise by the pro- 
intemal tective tariff, the Democratic -Republicans after the War 

improve- of i8i 2-i8i 5 exhibited their tendencies toward nationalism 

the national in the favor with which they looked upon improvement of 
government, transportation facilities by the national government. 
There had been agitation for undertakings of this sort from the 
very beginning of the national government in 1789, but while the 
statesmen of the period were directing their efforts toward organ- 
izing the government on a sound basis and defending the neutral 
rights of the United States on the sea, the movement for national 
internal improvements gathered strength but slowly. It had been 
the desire for better transportation facilities between the seaboard and 
the new western lands of Congress that had led indirectly to the con- 
stitutional convention of 1787. After the Constitution went into 
effect the admission into the Union of new states west of the mountains 
brought into both houses of Congress vigorous advocates of the con- 
struction of roads and canals at the national expense. The very 
hardships of their journeys over the mountains between Washington 
and the West impressed on the minds of these legislators the necessi- 
ties of the situation. 

In Jefferson's time pressure was brought to bear upon the President 
and upon Congress to allow the national construction of roads to the 
new lands and thus to facilitate travel to the West. Jefferson's 



THE WAR OF 1812 



235 



desire was that the states themselves should construct the desired 
highways for this migration, but the states held back, The Cumber- 
and before Jefferson left office he gave his official con- land Road. 
sent to the construction of a single national road, called the Cumber- 
land Road, running from Cumberland, Maryland, on the Potomac, 




iN N S V '. > \ \ 1 V I ^ Cl-l 



TiiE Cltmberl.\nd Ro.\d 



The demand 
for a more 
extensive 
programme of 
national im- 
provements. 



to Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. This great undertaking was com- 
pleted in 1838 at a total expenditure of slightly over $4,000,000. So 
long as the road remained in the hands of the Federal government it 
was free to all without the payment of tolls; but when the states, 
through which the road passed, acquired it by gift of the government 
in the thirties, toll gates were set up along its course. 

Enthusiasts, who had faith in the future of their country, called 
upon Congress, after the war had strengthened the spirit of nationalism, 
to discard the cautious policy of a single road for a general 
policy of improvements which would involve the govern- 
ment construction of roads and canals in every part of the 
country. This sweeping programme was put through 
Congress in the "Bonus Bill," devoting the million and a 
half of money to be paid to the government by the Second Bank of the 
United States for its charter, to carrying out the desired improvements. 
In passing the measure, the Democratic-Republicans of the Fourteenth 
Congress, friendly to the national bank and to the fostering of manu- 
factures by a protective tariff, were again in the old position of the 
Federalists. Calhoun of South Carolina, in warm advocacy of the 
policy, pointed out how the country had suffered during the late war 
from lack of proper means of transportation for moving the troops; 
he maintained not only that commercial prosperity required improved 
means of transportation, but that the security of the Union of the 
states depended upon it. Disunion, he protested, would be the great- 
est of calamities. In reply to those who opposed the measure out of 
regard for strict construction of the Constitution, he cited the con- 
struction of the Cumberland Road as a precedent and the "general 



236 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



welfare" clause of the Constitution as authority for the work; in con- 
clusion he asked, "If we are restricted in the use of our money to the 
enumerated powers, on what principle can the purchase of Louisiana 
be justified?" 

President Madison vetoed the Bonus Bill, although he had signed 
the bank and tariff bills. Like Jefferson, he believed that the improve- 
ments were desirable, but that Congress could not con- 
struct them till a constitutional amendment had been 
passed definitely giving it this power. The President 
was upholding the traditional principles of his party, while 
Congress, discarding consistency, was responding to the demands of 
the growing nation. 

The invention of the steamboat by Robert Fulton in 1807 greatly 
increased popular interest in problems of transportation. Like many 
The steam- another genius, Fulton was ridiculed when he sought to 
^°**- give the first public exhibition of his device, but the 

crowds that gathered at the wharves of New York to jeer at "Fulton's 



The opposi- 
tion o^ Presi 
dent 
Madison. 





The " Clermont " 



folly" remained to behold his triumph, for "the thing moved." John 
Fitch of Connecticut had invented a steamboat in the days just after 
the Revolutionary War, but he failed to make it a commercial success 
and in despair committed suicide. The itiagnitude of the achievement 
of Fitch and Fulton is impressive, when we reflect that George Wash- 
ington and Napoleon Bonaparte used practically the same means of 
transportation over the surface of the earth as did Alexander the 
Great and Julius Caesar. For thousands of years wheeled vehicles, 
rowboats, and sailboats had been in use without any virtual improve- 
ment, till Fulton's Clermont, propelled by steam, passed up the Hudson 



THE WAR OF 1812 



237 



from New York to Albany. The utilization of steam for land trans- 
portation followed within twenty years. 



THE FRONTIER IN 1815 

The changes in the country west of the mountains, since the begin- 
nings of Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio a half century earlier, were 
marked. Sevier, Robertson, and Boone had blazed their changes in 
way through the forests or followed the paths of the In- 



the West, 




First Steamboat from Pittsburg to New Orleans 



dians and wild animals. Less than a half century later, Henry Clay, 
representative of the state of Kentucky passed up the Ohio by steamboat 
and availed himself of the advantages of the Cumberland Road on 
his way east to the seat of government. The first steamboat to appear 
in the West was launched on the Ohio at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in 
181 1, and by 1822 one hundred such craft were calling at the port of 
New Orleans alone and scores at other western river ports. 

The cotton gin as well as the steamboat stimulated western set- 
tlement. When Whitney invented the gin, cotton was raised mainly 
in the seaboard states of Georgia and South Carohna, but Rapid exten- 
its culture spread rapidly into North Carolina, Virginia, sion of cot- 
Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee. The °" growing, 
three last-named states, with their immensely rich bottom lands in the 
valley of the Mississippi, along with the neighboring state of Ala- 
bama, were raising one-third of the cotton crop of the country by 182 1, 
and a few years later over two-thirds. 



238 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



From iSio to 1840 the three states of Alabama, Mississippi, and 
Louisiana, which in 1810 contained 116,000 inhabitants, nearly dotibled 
Growth of their population every ten years. The five states of 
population. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin in- 
creased in population from 50,000 in 1800 to 800,000 in 1820 and 




Picking Cotton, near Atl.\nta, Ga. 

3,000,000 in 1840. In the single decade 1S00-1810, Ohio, Indiana, 
and Illinois, each multiplied its population by five. The largest 
towns in the West in 1810, all situated on the rivers, were New 
Orleans with 24,000 inhabitants, Pittsburg with 6000, Cincinnati with 
2500, and St. Louis with 5000. Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and 
Chicago, on the lakes farther north, were still small villages. In the 
five years, 181 5-1820, five new states were admitted into the Union 
from the new regions, Mississippi and Alabama in the Southwest, 
and Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri in the Northwest. Ohio in the 
Northwest and Louisiana in the Southwest had been admitted in 
1803 and 181 2 respectively. 



THE WAR OF 1812 



239 



The population of the entire Union numbered 3,900,000 in 1790, 
5,000,000 in iSoo, 7,000,000 in 1810, and 9,000,000 in 1820. Well 
might Calhoun exclaim in Congress, "We are great and rapidly, I 




Cincinnati in 1810 

was about to say, fearfully, growing. This is our pride and our danger, 
our weakness and our strength." 



Vermont . 

Kentucky. 
Tennessee 
Ohio ..... 
Louisiana . 
Indiana. . . 
Mississippi 
Illinois.. . . 
Alabama. . 
Missouri . . 
Maine .... 
Michigan 
Arkansas . 
Florida . . . 

Iowa 

Wisconsin. 











Population 






Made 

a 
State 




1790 


1800 


1810 


1820 


1S30 


1840 


1850 


1910 


1791 


85000 


154000 


2 I 7000 


235000 


280000 


291000 


314000 


355000 


1792 


73000 


220000 


406000 


564000 


680000 


7 8 0000 


982000 


22S9000 


1796 


35000 


105000 


260000 420000 


68 1000 


830000 1 000000 


2 1 S4000 


1803 




45000 


230000 580000 


937000 


1520000 1980000 


4767000 


1812 






76000 


153000 


215000 


352000 


5 1 7000 


1656000 


1816 




5000 


28000 


147000 


343000 


685000 


988000 


2700000 


1817 




8000 


40000 


75000 


136000 


375000 


606000 


1797000 


1818 






12000 


5SOOO 


157000 


476000 


850000 


5638000 


1819 








1 2 7000 


309000 


590000 


7710CO 


2138000 


1820 






19000 


66000 


140000 


3800CO 


680000 


3290000 


1820 


96000 


150000 


228000 


298000 


400000 


500000 


580000 


740000 


iS3b 






4000 


gooo 


31000 


212000 


397000 


2810000 


183b 






1000 


14000 


30000 


9700c 


209000 


1 5 74000 


i«45 










34000 


54000 


87000 


752000 


1846 












43000 


192000 


2224000 


1848 












30000 


305000 


2333000 



240 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

The commercial interaction of the various sections of the country on 
one another was an important development arising out of the improve- 
The inde- ment in transportation and the rapid westward drift of 
pendence of population. Immense prosperity came to the South 
sections of both on the seaboard and in the Mississippi Valley, through 
the Union. ^-j^g cultivation of cotton, and to the Northwest from a 
variety of products, chiefly corn, wheat, oats, hogs, sheep, 
and cattle. Devotion to a single product rendered the South dependent 
on the states of the Northwest for food products, and this near and 
easy market down the Mississippi was to the Northwest at this time 
its chief source of profit. The Northeast rejoiced in the prosperity of 
both agricultural sections, as growing markets for its manufactured 
goods, and in turn drew from these raw material and food supplies. 
The prosperity of the various parts of the country was mutual and 
interdependent. 

The Appalachian barrier on the way to the interior was pierced in 
se^'eral places. The French early traversed the Great Lakes, and 
Routes to crossing at various portages, floated down the streams and 
the West. rivers. Young George Washington and General Brad- 
dock marched overland from the valley of the Potomac to the Valley 
of the Monongahela, and thence to the Ohio at Pittsburg. Sevier, 
Robertson, and Boone, and those who followed them to Tennessee and 
Kentucky, passed down the valleys stretching southwest from Penn- 
sylvania, and over the mountains at Cumberland Gap. George 
Rogers Clark and his expedition from Virginia took the old route of 
Washington and Braddock to the Monongahela and Pittsburg, and 
floated down the Ohio to the Mississippi on rafts. The Marietta set- 
tlers from New England made their way over the mountains from 
Philadelphia to Pittsburg. All these routes were in use after 1800, 
and all of them, in comparison with those of the present day, were 
slow, laborious, and dangerous. 

The tribulations of frontier travel, which afforded the strongest 
argument in favor of internal improvements, repeated the vexatious 
Frontier experiences of colonial days. The travelers record the 

travel. dangers of the bridges and ferries, and the inconveniences 

of the inns. The following extracts from the diary of a Connecticut 
girl traveling to Ohio in 1810 portray these conditions. " 'What is 
everybody's business is nobody's' — for instance it is nobody's business 
where we are going, yet everybody inquires — every toll gatherer and 
child that sees us. . . They come in, in droves young and old — 
black and white women and children. . . . Just as we set down to 
tea, in came a dozen or two of women, each with a child in her arms, 



THE WAR OF 1812 



241 



and stood around the room. ... I concluded that they came to see 
us Yankees, as they would a learned pig. . . . The bridge over it [the 
Delaware] is elegant, I think — It is covered, & has 16 windows each 
side. . . . It is amusing to see the variety of paintings on the inn- 
keeper's signs — I saw one in N. J. with Thos. Jeff'n's head & shoulders 
and his name above it — today I saw General G. Washington — his 
name underneath — General Putnam riding down the steps at Horse- 




0VERL.\ND TiLWTL 



neck — one sign was merely 3 little kegs hanging down one after the 
other —They have the sun rising, & at Meridian, here a full moon, a 
new moon, the moon & 7 stars around her, the Lion and Unicorn 'fight- 
ing &c.,' & everything else that a Dutchman had ever seen or heard. 
. . . We are obliged to sleep every & any way at most of the inns 
now. . . . My companions were disturbed by the wagoners who 
put up here & were all night in the room below us, eating, drinking, 
talking & swearing. ... I have learned to eat raw pork & drink 
whiskey. . . . Don't you think I shall do for a new country? . . . 
We saw some men today mending the roads. ... I did not think a 
Pennsylvanian ever touched a road or made a bridge for we are 
obliged to ride through every stream we come to. . . . We have been 
nearly twenty miles today & I have been obliged to walk up hill, till we 
are all very tired. . . . From what I have seen and heard, I think 
the State of Ohio will be well filled up before winter. . . . Wagons with- 
out number every day go on. One went on containing forty people, — 



242 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



We almost every day see them with i8 or 20 — one stopped here to- 
night with 27. . . . We are over the 6th mountain & at an inn at 
the foot of it. . . . This mountain is called worse than any of them — 
it is only 6 miles over. We have only come 8 today & I have not 
been in the wagon. The horses once or twice got set & cast &c. — we 
have a deal of bad luck. . . . We saw a very large rock containing a 
great many names — we added ours to the number." 




Typical Log Cabin 



praine 
country. 



In the primeval forest, which stretched for several hundred miles 
west of the Alleghanies, the experiences of the frontiersman were 
The new essentially the same as those of the early settlers in the 

forests nearer the Atlantic. When these wooded lands 
of Ohio and Indiana were passed and in Illinois the 
eastern limits of the broad interior prairies were reached, new ex- 
periences were in store for settlers. The country in this latter section 
was flat and in large measure treeless, and newcomers could enter at 
once on fine lands prepared for them by nature, without first under- 
going the arduous labor of clearing, which had been bestowed on almost 
every acre between Illinois and the Atlantic. Farming and grazing 
could begin at once; great spreading fields of grass, untouched by the 
hands of civilized man, stood ready, inviting flocks and herds to come 
and partake of their bounty. 

The typical cabin of the frontiersman was built of logs. There 



THE WAR OF 1812 



243 



were hundreds of cabins without a nail or a particle of iron about them, 
with the cracks between the rough logs "chinked and The log 
daubed" with mud. A few pounds of nails, a dozen cabin, 
panes of glass, were amt>ng the comforts of life. If a saw-mill was near 
at hand, to save the labor of splitting slabs for doors and floors, the 
settler was lucky. In addition to the cabin there was needed a meat 
house, a corn crib, and stables, all built of rough logs. If no good 
spring of water was at hand, a well had to be dug, the labor usually of 
four or five days. 




Mail Carrier about 1800 



Except in the timbered tracts, where in the prairie it was wretched 
policy to settle, the comparatively easy process of grubbing super- 
seded clearing and girdling. In preparation for plowing. Grubbing 
the farmer, with a mattock, had to grub out the sprouts, plowing, and 
roots, and stumps of all small growth. An acre could be ®"""S- 
grubbed in from three to six days. To turn over the prairie sward 
required a strong team and a large sharp plow. To split the rails 
necessary for fencing was an enormous task. J. M. Peck, in "A 
Guide to Immigrants," published in 183 1, estimated the expenses of 
a farm of 160 acres, divided into four fields surrounded by a high 
fence eight rails high and staked, allowing two stakes to each panel 
of fence and two division fences crossing each other at right angles, as 
follows: to inclose and divide the farm into four fields would require 
15,360 rails and 3840 stakes, the rails ten, and the stakes eight feet 
in length. The cost of rails was 50 cents per hundred, of stakes 37^ 
cents per hundred, which, with the cost of hauling and laying, together 
with a few extras, brought the expense of fencing up to $160. Adding 
the cost of breaking up 160 acres of prairie at $2 per acre, the cost of 



244 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

all buildings, and the cost of land at $2 per acre before 1820 and $1.25 
per acre after that date, the total expense of the prairie farm of one 
hundred and sixty acres approximated one thousand dollars. 

Actual expenditures on the prairie were generally far less. The 
energetic brought their own horses, wagons, and plows, broke up their 
The ener- land themselves, and by their own efforts built their 
getic and cabins, split their rails, fenced their fields, and culti- 

vated their crops. Peck cites the record of two typical 
settlers. "J. S.," from near Zanesville, Ohio, was of the energetic 
class, and in the first year raised in Illinois a crop of corn, forty bushels 
to the acre. "P. Q." from Tennessee arrived at about the same time, 
but instead of giving himself to hard work, spent his time in hunting, 
lounging at the grocery store, and getting in but a small quantity of 
wood and meal. He took an old cabin that was open and exposed 
to the weather, and would not "chink and daub" it, as he intended to 
"move on." His large family fell sick through exposure, and the 
children were not sent to school. In the spring "P. Q." rented land 
and raised a sorry crop, which he sold in the field, and then "moved 
on," to pursue the same course over again in the next county. Added 
Peck, "Where one man breaks up and fences one hundred acres in a 
season, about fifty take the track of 'P. Q.' " 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

H. Adams, United States, V-IX; McMaster, United States, IV; K. C. Babcock, 
American Nationality; Turner, New West; Harding, Orations, 172-190. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. Perry's Victory. Journal of American History, VIII, I; Epochs, V, 28-36; 
H. Adams, United States, VII, 115-127. 

2. Constitution and Guerriere. C. F. Adams, Wednesday, August ig, 1S12, 
6.30 p.m. — The Birth of a World Power, American Historical Review, XVIII, 513-521 ; 
Epochs, V, 11-20; H. Adams, United States, VI, 370-377. 

3. The Hartford Con\'ention. H. Adams, United States, VIII, 287-310; Mac- 
DONALD, Select Documents, 1776-1861, 198-207; Epochs, 96-101; H. V. Ames, State 
Documents, 77-88. 

4. The Cotton Gin. Epochs, IV, 70-82; E. C. Brooks, Story of the Cotton Gin, 
89-99. 

5. The Steamboat. A. R. Wallace, Wonderful Century, i-ii; Epochs, IV, 186- 
196 and VI, 17-19; McMaster, United States, III, 486-494; and IV, 397-402; Old 
South Leaflets, V, io8; A. C. Sutcliffe, Robert Fulton, and The Clermont; D. L. Buck- 
man, Old Steamboat Days on the Hudson; C. S. Bullock, The Miracle of the First 
Steamboat, Journal of American History, I, 33-48, also I, 395-432; Dunbar, Travel in 
America, I, 232-264, and II, 357-414. 

6. The Western Frontier. J. M. Peck, Guide for Immigrants; R. R. Wilson, 
Bttrnaby's Travels; Thwaites, Ed., Early Western Travels; Sparks, Ed., English Settle- 



THE WAR OF 1812 245 

msnt in the Illinois; J. E. Kirkpatrick, Timothy Flint; M. Farrand, Ed., Journey to 
Ohio, by M. V. H. Dwight; Contemporaries, III, 459-478; H. M. Chittenden, Ameri- 
can Fur Trade; Epochs, V, 154-157, and VI, 130-135; Grinnell, Trails, 330-358; 
Sparks, Expansion, 238-248. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

F. S. Key, Star Spangled Banner; Holmes, Old Ironsides; I. Bacheller, D'ri 
and I; Cooper, The Prairie; D. G. Mitchell, Doctor Johns. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Was Jefferson right in refusing to go to war to vindicate the rights of neutrals on the 
sea? In what respects were the principles of Jeffersonian democracy injurious to the 
United States? What were the decisive military campaigns in the war, 1812-1815, and 
why? Was the capture of Washington by the British an important event in the 
conduct of the war? How do you explain the failure of the attempts of the United 
States to invade Canada? Explain the sectionalism of the war, 1812-1815. Why 
did the war ultimately increase the feeling of nationahsm? In what ways did the 
industrial revolution in the United States derive advantage from conditions in Great 
Britain? W^hich section of the United States gained most from the results of the war? 
What were the leading issues in current politics before the people in the presidential 
campaign of 181 2? 



CHAPTER XVIII 
REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 

AN ERA OF GOOD FEELING, 1817-1821 

There was hardly a contest worthy of the name over the presidency 
of 1816. The Democratic-RepubHcans, now sometimes referred to as 
The presi- National Republicans from their championship of broad 
dentiai eiec- national measures, nominated as their candidate the 
Secretary of State, James Monroe. The vanishing 
Federalists made no formal nomination, but they carried three states, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware, and cast their vote for 
Rufus King of New York, who had twice been their candidate- for 
Vice President. Monroe carried all the other states and received 
183 votes in the electoral colleges to 34 for King. 

James Monroe was the fourth in the distinguished Virginia line of 
presidents, and his election fairly entitled that state to her reputation 
James as "The Mother of Presidents." He had served as min- 

Monroe. jgj-gj. ^q France under Washington, minister to Great 

Britain under Jefferson, and Secretary of State under Madison. 

Associated with Monroe in his cabinet were three especially strong 
men, John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, John C. Calhoun, Sec- 
President retary of War, and William H. Crawford, Secretary of 
Monroe's the Treasury. Adams, the son of ex-President John 
Adams, had been trained for public life from his youth. 
As a boy he accompanied his father, who was sent to Paris on a 
diplomatic mission, and later he himself represented his country at 
several different European courts, crowning his diplomatic career by 
serving as one of the commissioners, along with Henry Clay, Albert 
Gallatin and two others, in the negotiation of the treaty of peace with 
Great Britain in 1814. Calhoun owed his position to his record in the 
House of Representatives, where he attracted attention by his display 
of vigorous intellectual powers and his enthusiastic support of broad 
national measures. Crawford's services in national politics had been 
rendered as Senator from Georgia and as minister to France. In the 
Department of the Treasury he won the praise of no less an authority 
than Albert Gallatin. 

246 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 247 

Three new members of Congress, who were destined to future 
greatness, were Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, as intellectual as 
Calhoun and as eloquent as Clay; Rufus King, an old other 
Federalist leader, famous for his anti-slavery sentiments; i^^^^ers. 
and Thomas H. Benton of Missouri, ardent in his devotion to western 
interests. Ex-Secretary Albert Gallatin, and ex-Presidents Adams, 
Jefferson, and Madison maintained their interest in public affairs and 
were valued counselors. 

With the Federalist party virtually out of existence, so that partisan 
strife on national questions was quiescent, President Monroe happily 
declared to the people that they were living in an "era of j^ie "era of 
good feeling." Following the example of Washington, who good 
had aroused public enthusiasm by long trips through the ^^ ^' 
different sections of the country, Monroe traveled thousands of miles 
in New England, the West, and the South, and mingled with all classes 
of the people. Unlike Washington, who courteously accepted the love 
and devotion of the people but made no speeches, Monroe invariably 
addressed the crowds which assembled to greet him. 

Foreign affairs of importance engaged the nation's attention and 
evoked a unanimity of sentiment that added to the internal harmony. 
Florida, which w'as still in the possession of Spain, was Trouble 
the home of wandering tribes of Seminole Indians, with Spanish 
During the second war with Great Britain they caused °" ^* 
trouble for the United States by crossing the border and harassing the 
settlers of the United States. They continued their depredations 
after the close of the war and did not cease until Andrew Jackson was 
sent against them in 1818. He pursued them into their own swamps 
and in three months had them completely routed. Such hostile 
operations on the soil of a foreign state were justified on the accepted 
principle of international law that one nation may invade the territory 
of another for the purpose of abating a nuisance. When Spain, highly 
incensed, demanded redress for Jackson's acts, Monroe boldly assumed 
responsibility for them and made the counter-demand on Spain that she 
either keep order in Florida or sell the peninsula to the United States. 

Spain became convinced that she had better dispose of her colony 
on such terms as she could secure, rather than run the risk of losing it 
and receiving nothing in return. Accordingly, in 1819, The purchase 
she ceded Florida to the United States. The two na- of Florida, 
tions reciprocally renounced all claims for damages or injuries which 
they had suffered at the hands of one another, and in addition the 
United States agreed to pay the claims of their citizens against Spain to 
an amount not exceeding $5,000,000. The United States gave up her 



248 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

claims to the Spanish colony of Texas, which seemed doubtful at the 
time but have recently been discovered to have been well grounded 
by the terms of the purchase of Louisiana, in which territory Texas 
should rightfully have been included, according to old French docu- 
ments. Spain at the same time made the concession of giving up to 
the United States all claims to East and West Florida, east of the 
Mississippi, and west of the Mississippi all rights to territory north 
and east of a line running in general northwest through the courses 
of the Sabine, Red, and Arkansas Rivers, and thence west on the 
forty- second parallel to the Pacific. This strengthened the hold of 
the United States on the Oregon country in the Northwest, where 
Spain had a shadowy claim. The nation generally acquiesced in this 
third territorial acquisition, as she did in the fiist in 1783, whereas 
all the other territorial acquisitions in her history have encountered 
opposition. Although Florida, with an area of only 65,000 square 
miles, was not as large or as rich as the Louisiana Purchase or as 
the country west of the Alleghanies ceded by Great Britain in 1783, 
it was of great strategical importance. With Florida in her possession 
the United States could more easily guard the Gulf of Mexico, the key 
to the Mississippi River and the interior of the continent, from possible 
foreign invasion, and more easily avert attack through Florida herself. 

The constitutionality of annexing foreign territory, which had been 
left an unsettled question after the acquisition of Louisiana, was 
The consti- authoritatively afiirmed by the Supreme Court in 1828. 
tutionaiity Said the Court: "The Constitution confers absolutely on 
foreign ^^^ the government of the Union the powers of making war 
territory. g^j^(j of making treaties; consequently, that government 

possesses the power of acquiring territory, either by conquest or by 
treaty." 

While the Florida question was still pending and even earlier, the 
problem of recognizing the independence of the Spanish and Portuguese 
colonies in Central and South America had come up. When 
of the inde- Napoleon Bonaparte, Emperor of the French, invaded 
th"south°^ the Kingdom of Spain in 1808, deposed the Spanish sov- 
American ereigns, and placed his own brother, Joseph, on the throne, 
Repubhcs. ^j^^ Spanish American colonies rejected the yoke of the 
new monarch and rose in rebellion under the leadership of Simon Bolivar 
in Colombia, San Martin in Argentine and Chile, and other patriots. 
The interest of the people of the United States in the struggle was 
both commercial and sentimental. The independence of the Spanish 
colonies would almost certainly mean a chance for outsiders to 
trade in the South American and Central American markets, from 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 249 

which they had been excluded for centuries by the narrow Spanish 
colonial system. Before such magnificent opportunities, which were 
almost unlimited in their possibilities, the trade of the British West 
Indies, once eagerly sought by the merchants of the United States, 
faded into insignificance. Moreover, the liberty-loving citizens of 
the United States, the first American republic to free itself from Euro- 
pean control, felt a peculiar sympathy for the Spanish-American 
patriots fighting to make good their own independence. The people of 
the United States were almost a unit in favor of recognizing the inde- 
pendence of the revolting colonies and tendering them their moral sup- 
port. Although the treaty with Spain for the cession of Florida was 
concluded February 22, 1819, the shrewd Spanish monarch delayed the 
exchange of ratifications till February 22, 1821, and in this interval of 
two years President Monroe refused the helping hand to the rebels in 
arms against Spain, lest such a step antagonize Spain and block nego- 
tiations for the annexation of Florida. The conclusion of the Florida 
treaty left the United States free to act, and she recognized the inde- 
pendence of all Spain's American colonies excepting Cuba and Porto 
Rico, and that of Portuguese Brazil, in 1822. 

The interests of Great Britain coincided with those of the United 
States. Outside of Great Britain, however, forces were at work in 
Europe which threatened to restore Spain's tottering jj,g genesis 
American empire. When, in 1820, Spain was prepar- of the Mon- 
ing an expedition to save her colonies, back of her stood 
Russia, Austria, and Prussia, in the Holy Alliance, formed in 
1815, to forward the government of this world by "the precepts of 
Justice, Christian Charity, and Peace." The pious profession was a 
cloak for the furtherance of the interests of absolute monarchy against 
"the curse of revolution." A democratic uprising in Spain herself 
was put down with the support of the Alliance, and under the leader- 
ship of the same Alliance the powers of Europe assembled in congress 
at Verona in 1822, to discuss their common interests and those of Spain 
in particular. Russia, Austria, Prussia, France and Spain favored a 
combined armed expedition against the South American insurgents. 
Great Britain alone of the European nations held out against the step. 
Through her foreign secretary the latter power proposed to President 

Monroe that Britain and the United States act together to ^, 

o 1 A • 1 T. T r , Its provi- 

protect South America; but Monroe preferred to meet sions. No 

the situation alone, and in his annual message of 1823 (erfefencein 

announced to the world the position of the United States the politics 

in regard to South America. "We owe it, therefore, to °^^™«"<=*- 

candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United 



2 so NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

States and those powers to declare," he said, "that we should con- 
sider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion 
of the hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the 
existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not 
interfered and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have 
declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence 
we have on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, 
we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing 
them or controlling in any other manner their destiny by any Euro- 
pean power in any other light than as the manifestation of an 
unfriendly disposition toward the United States." With this inde- 
pendent stand the British found themselves quite out of sympathy. 

There was also in President Monroe's message a warning to Russia, 
which by a decree of 182 1 was attempting to extend its power on the 
No territorial Pacific coast south from Alaska as far as the fifty-first 
acquisition parallel, over a part of the Oregon territory already claimed 
by foreign by both Great Britain' and the United States. The 
powers. President judged the occasion "proper for asserting, as a 

principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are 
involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent 
condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not 
to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European 
powers." 

This so-called Monroe Doctrine, which, it must be remembered, was 
an utterance of the President and not a law of Congress, contained, there- 
fore, three principles. First, the United States would not 
results of interfere in European afifairs; second, European nations 

the Monroe must not interfere with the existing governments in 
America; and third, European nations must set up no 
more new colonies in America. One immediate result of the firm 
stand of the United States was that Spain did not recover her revolted 
colonies; and another was a treaty between the United States and 
Russia, concluded in 1824, by which the southern boundary of Alaska 
was placed at 54° 40' north latitude. 

THE END OF THE ERA OF GOOD FEELING 

Increasing sectionalism and increasing personal and party strife, 
as year by year the nationalizing influences of the War of 181 2 receded 
Increasing into the past, furnish the key to the history of the country 
sectionalism, during the second administration of President Monroe and 
that of President John Quincy Adams which followed. The happy 
"era of good feeling" of Monroe's first term was but temporary. 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 



251 



The presidential contests of 1820 and 1824 afiford a striking indica- 
tion of the changing spirit of the times. Apparently all was harmony 
when Monroe was reelected in 1820. There was but one jj^^ gj_ 
party and one candidate. President Monroe missed a dentiai con- 
unanimous election in the electoral colleges by a single 
vote, which was cast for John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, 

because one elector felt that the 
honor of a unanimous election to 
the first office in the land should 
belong to none but George Wash- 
ington. 

To this spiritless election the 
bitter struggle over the presidency 

in 1824, with five can- t.. „ „,^^- 
^' Ine presi- 

didates of the Demo- dentiai con- 
,. T, ,,. test of 1824. 

cratic-Republican or 

National-Republican party vying 
with one another for the office, 
furnishes an instructive contrast. 
Storms had been brewing during 
the apparent calm. The contest- 
ants in the five-cornered race were 
Adams, Calhoun, and Crawford 
from the cabinet of the retiring 
President, Henry Clay, Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, and 
Andrew Jackson, the country's 
greatest military leader. Crawford was the nominee of the congres- 
sional caucus of the party, while the others were nominated by state 
legislatures and local state conventions. Jackson was the choice of 
the largest number of voters on election day, but neither he nor any of 
his rivals received the requisite majority of votes in the electoral col- 
leges, and in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution the 
ultimate choice fell to the House of Representatives, which awarded 
the office to Adams. Clay, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
wielded a strong influence over his fellow-members, and when the new 
President made him Secretary of State, Jackson and his followers, with 
the cry of "bargain and corruption," charged that Adams had promised 
the secretaryship to Clay to secure the latter's support in the contest 
in the House of Representatives. The charges have since been effec- 
tually disproved, but at that day they were believed by thousands and 
exercised an influence that seriously injured the political fortunes of 




John Qitncy ;\D.\iis 



252 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

both Adams and Clay to the end of their careers. Calhoun, who had 
fallen out of the presidential race before election day, was elected Vice 
President without a contest. 

The subjects provoking political strife in the troubled period 

that followed the era of good feeling were many in number, the most 

fruitful being that of slavery, which roused a tremendous 

tionai ques- clash of factions near the close of Monroe's first adminis- 

tion of Slav- tration. The North in general was for freedom, the South 

ery. ° ' 

in general for slavery because of the growing profits of slave 
labor in the cotton fields; but this divergence of interests did not pro- 
duce a cleavage in politics till the two sections came into collision over 
the admission of the territory of Missouri into the Union as a state. 
As we have already seen, slavery had existed in America from the 
days of Columbus, first the slavery of the native Indians, and then 

„ , . that of the blacks of Africa, introduced in 1S02. As early 

The begin- 

ning of Slav- as 1526 black slaves toiled with d'Ayllon in his fruitless 

^'■y '^. attempt to found a settlement in Virginia. After the 

America. ^ , . 

English set up a permanent colony on this same coast 

almost a century later, a Dutch trading ship brought the first negro 

slaves to the settlement at Jamestown in 16 19. 

Negro slavery exercised a strong sway over the British colonies. 
In the rice swamps of the Carolinas, and in the sugar and tobacco 
Slavery in plantations both of the mainland and of the West Indies, 
colonial the slaves performed services of immense economic value; 

in the North, where the unyielding soil required more 
careful and intelligent cultivation, they were less useful. Under 
the charter of the British King the Royal African Company, many of 
the members of which were prominent in the social and political life 
of Great Britain, carried on a hugely profitable trade transporting the 
African blacks to America. It has been estimated that at the begin- 
ning of the eighteenth century British vessels brought 25,000 slaves 
annually to the British colonies in America, and that the number im- 
ported in the single year 1771 reached 47,000. 

When the colonies endeavored to put a stop to this traffic, their laws 
taxing the trade and even in some cases actually prohibiting it, 
Efforts to encountered the royal veto. The First Continental Con- 

abolish gress in 1774 resolved: "We will neither import nor 

s avery. purchase any slave imported after the first of December 

next; after which time we will wholly discontinue the slave trade." 
The Second Continental Congress two years later voted that no slave 
"be imported into any of the thirteen colonies." This was the high- 
water mark of colonial anti-slavery. 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 



253 



The Declaration of Independence adopted three months later 

ignored the subject. In his collected writings Thomas Jefferson 

tells how in the original draft of the Declaration he had 

inserted a clause condemning the King for waging "cruel the Deciara- 

war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred *'°" of in- 

" dependence, 

rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people 

who never offended him, captivating them and carrying them into 

slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their 

transportation thither. . . . Determined to keep open a market where 

MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for 

suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this 

execrable commerce." This clause was struck out "in complaisance 

to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never attempted to restrain 

the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished 

to continue it. Our northern brethren, also, I believe, felt a little 

tender under those censures; for though their people had very few 

slaves themselves, yet they had been pretty considerable carriers 

of them to others." 

In the enthusiasm for human rights and liberty which attended and 
followed the Revolution, the Northern States stopped the importation 
of slaves and gradually went to the length of freeing the jhe emanci- 
slaves within their borders. Many Southerners would pation move- 
have adopted the same policy in their states, could they ing the 
have carried the majority with them. Jefferson labored Revolution, 
to induce his native state to purchase all the slaves in Virginia 
and to colonize and educate them outside the nation at the state's 
expense. He failed in this effort, but, nothing daunted, proposed 
a plan to the Congress of the Confederation in 1784 to exclude 
slavery from all the public lands west of the Appalachians. This was 
defeated by a narrow margin, but in 1787 the plan was applied by the 
same Congress, in the celebrated Ordinance of that year, to that part 
of the western domain lying northwest of the Ohio River. 

The constitutional convention, which was in session in Philadelphia 
when the Congress of the Confederation passed the vote against 
slavery in the Northwest Territory, discussed the sub- slavery in 
ject of slavery, but did not see fit to recognize the system t^e consti- 
directly. In fact, the words slave and slavery do not ventionof 
appear in the Constitution. Indirectly, however, the ^''^'^• 
document recognized slavery in several ways. The merely negative 
act of separating the jurisdiction of the states and the nation led to 
important results in this connection. On the ground that powers not 
delegated to the national government by the Constitution nor for- 



254 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

bidden by it to the states, were reserved to the states, it was a well- 
respected principle of politics down to 1862 that the government of 
the United States could not touch slavery in the states. In further 
recognition of the institution, the constitutional convention made the 
decision that three-fifths of all slaves should be counted as population 
in determining the size of a state's representation in the House of 
Representatives and its share in direct taxes imposed by the general 
government; and it put off till 1808 the date when Congress might 
prohibit the foreign slave trade; but in each case a circumlocution 
was resorted to in order to avoid the actual use of the term slave. 
A national law prohibiting the importation of slaves went into 
effect at the earliest possible date, January i, 1808, the same day that 
Great Britain's ban on the trade went into effect. 

The American Colonization Society was formed in 1816 to take 
freed slaves out of the country to a colony prepared for them in Africa, 
The coloni- later recognized as the independent republic of Liberia, 
zation Henry Clay was at one time president of this society, and 

movemen . jnany eminent men were included in the list of its mem- 
bers, but the scheme of colonization of the blacks never proved a 
success. There were emancipation societies, too, in these early days 
of the nineteenth century both in the Southern States and in the states 
of the North. 

By the time Missouri was applying for admission to the Union as a 

slave state, slavery, largely through the influence of the cotton gin, 

The change ^^-d become SO important commercially that it was begin- 

of sentiment nine; to effect a change of sentiment in the South. Philo- 

in the South i- 1 j 1 . r • ^• 

against eman- sophjcal and moral arguments tor emancipation were 

cipation. giving Way before the demonstrated profitableness of 

slavery. The Southern States were falling to the defense of the sys- 
tem as a necessary evil and even as a positive good. 

The debate over the admission of Missouri waxed hot between the 
sections. Up to this time nine states had been admitted into the 
The debate Union with little or no debate on the subject of slavery, 
over the some free and some slave, as the case might be, till there 

Missouri into was an even balance between the free and the slave 
the Union. states, eleven on each side. A single new state would 
disturb the balance one way or the other. The pro-slavery element 
rested their argument in favor of making a slave state out of Mis- 
souri, on the treaty with France by which the Louisiana territory was 
annexed. This guaranteed to the people of the whole Louisiana coun- 
try the "free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion 
which they profess." Slaves, in their view, came under the head of 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 255 

property, and consequently the people of the territory of Missouri, 
carved out of Louisiana, must by the terms of the treaty be allowed 
to retain their slaves, and bring them with them when they were 
admitted into the Union. The opponents of slavery, on the other 
hand, took the position that slaves were not property but human 
beings, ownership in whom no treaty could guarantee. They foresaw 
that to allow Missouri to come into the Union as a slave state would 
set a precedent that might fasten slavery on any state later carved 
out of the Louisiana territory. The Northerners affirmed that Con- 
gress had the power tc lay down conditions, for example the giving 
of freedom to blacks, which territories seeking statehood must meet 
before entering the Union. This power of Congress the Southerners 
stoutly denied. 

To win an immediate victory the South consented to the famous 
Missouri Compromise, which they later regretted. Maine, still a part 
of Massachusetts, had received the consent of her mother ^j^^ ^^^_ 
state to separation, and her application for statehood souri Com- 
was now before Congress. It was decided to admit P''*'""^^- 
Maine as a free state to balance Missouri, which was allowed to come 
in as a slave state; but it was stipulated that in the remainder of the 
Louisiana territory, north of 36° 30' north latitude, the southern 
boundary of Missouri, slavery should be forever prohibited. Henry 
Clay was instrumental in pushing this compromise through Congress, 
although he was not its author. 

Weighty consequences followed the compromise and the discussion 
which it evoked. First, in prohibiting slavery in the territory north 
of 36° 30', another precedent was set along the line of the Results of 
dealings of Congress with slavery in the Northwest the 
Territory, in favor of the proposition that Congress onipromise. 
could control the matter of slavery in the territories. This was based 
upon the clause of the Constitution which says that "the Congress 
shall have power to dispose of and make all needful rules and regula- 
tions respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United 
States." Second, the power of Congress to lay down conditions which 
territories seeking statehood must meet, was emphasized. Third, 
the concession of the Southerners concerning slavery north of 36° 30' 
gradually led them to the realization that they had yielded too much to 
the free states for their own interests and they became more insistent 
upon their rights. Fourth, the moral aspects of slavery were discussed 
as never before, inasmuch as the very necessities of carrying on the 
debate, after it was once joined, led anti-slavery advocates to resort 
to every kind of attack on the hated social system, and the Southerners 



256 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

to defend their institution with renewed ardor. Northerners advanced 
from the mild arguments of the more cautious days, and by denouncing 
slavery as a moral wrong, started a controversy that was not to die till 
slavery itself should die. Fifth, the wisdom of Washington's farewell 
words in regard to sectional political parties and their danger to the 
Union was emphasized. The aged Jefferson wrote-. ''This momentous 
question, like a lire bell in the night, awakened me and filled me with 
horror. I considered it at once as the death knell of the Union." 

RAPID GROWTH OF SECTION.\LISM 

Under President Adams the sectional spirit grew with startling 

rapidity. Relations with the states of Central and South America, 

^. under the Monroe Doctrine, caused serious dispute and 

X/isputcs 

over the even led to sectional differences. From the vagueness 

Con^'ess °^ ^^^^ doctrine it was difficult to determine how far the 

United States was bound to cooperate with the southern 
republics. When the new and inexperienced states of Mexico, Central 
America, Colombia, and Peru, unable to decide what measures to take 
for the protection of their lately won freedom, invited the United 
States in 1826 to meet with them in a congress at Panama, President 
Adams was anxious to accept the invitation promptly. The south- 
ern Senators and Representatives in Washington, however, held back, 
fearing that Cuba and Porto Rico might be received into the congress, 
and that agitation for the emancipation of slaves, which had assumed 
large proportions in South America, might be communicated to these 
neighboring islands and through them to the United States. Nor 
could the slaveholders of the United States brook the idea of being 
obliged to see their commissioners mingle on the floor of the Panama 
congress with the black representatives from the free negro republic 
of Haiti, and as a possible consequence later to receive in Washington 
black ministers from this state. The government was so long in 
making up its mind to send delegates that when its commissioners 
arrived in Central America, the congress had adjourned. The weak 
federation of republics attempted by the conference was a failure, and 
the treaties which it projected were never signed; yet in this first Pan- 
American Congress, through the statesmanship of Bolivar, a high 
standard of union and arbitration was set as the ideal to which Ameri- 
can republics should aspire in their mutual relations. 

The narrow spirit of a single section was also arrayed against the 
Georgia and Federal government when President Adams sought to 
the Indians, protect the Creek and Cherokee Indians in the state of 
Georgia from what he deemed unfair treatment. With the aid and 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 257 

encouragement of the national government the Indians were being 
removed at this time from various parts of the seaboard to reser- 
vations made for them in the public lands of the West. As early 
as 1802 the national government had promised to acquire the Indian 
title to lands within the state of Georgia, but when Adams took 
office in 1825 they were still undisturbed in some of the best lands 
of the state. Action was slow under a new treaty of 1825, by which 
the Creeks ceded their lands to the United States, and the impatient 
state proceeded to survey the lands in question. When the President 
warned him to desist, the governor bluntly threatened civil war. 
Within two years the Creeks finally consented in a new treaty to 
give up their lands, and the issue between the state and the Federal 
government was avoided. Georgia was plainly taking the extreme 
attitude of states' rights. "Georgia is sovereign on her own soil," 
declared the state's executive. 

In the meantime the Cherokees were still holding lands in Georgia, 
which they had not ceded to the United States. They even made a 
constitution and set up a government of their own, president 
creating practically a "state within a state," prohibited Adams 
by the Constitution of the United States. Georgia replied * ^^^^ • 
by the assertion of her own jurisdiction over the Cherokee lands and 
their incorporation in five counties of the state. The President did 
all he could to defend the Indians until they could be legally removed, 
but the Senate refused to support him, and the humiliating spectacle 
was presented of the President of the United States left powerless 
before the defiance of a single state. 

Even the national bank, which had found favor in Congress during 

Madison's administrations, now encountered the active opposition of 

various sections. The supporters of the rival state 

banks were jealous of the superiority of the notes of the against the 

national bank. They feared, too, the power of the national 

..... -^ , 1 , bank, 

national institution to crush a state bank at any moment 

by collecting the notes of that bank and suddenly presenting them for 

payment. 

Laws harassing the national bank were passed in various state 

legislatures. Maryland laid a heavy tax on the business of the bank, 

till the Supreme Court decided that it must desist. The ^j^^ sunreme 

power to tax, said Chief Justice Marshall, in reading the Court and 

decision of the court in McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819, ® ^° ■ 

is the equivalent of the power to destroy, and no state ought to have 

the power to destroy an institution which was set up by a constitutional 

law of Congress. The constitutionality of the bank of the United 



258 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

States rested on the "necessary and proper clause" of the Constitution. 
In lucid language the decision explained and defended the doctrine 
of implied powers. "Among the enumerated powers, we do not find 
that of establishing a bank or creating a corporation. But there is no 
phrase in the instrument which, like the Articles of Confederation, 
excludes incidental or implied powers; and which requires that 
everything granted shall be expressly and minutely described. . . . 
A constitution to contain an accurate detail of all the subdivisions of 
which its great powers will admit, and of all the means by which they 
may be carried into execution, would partake of the prolixity of a 
legal code, and could scarcely be embraced by the human mind. It 
would probably never be understood by the public. . . . But we 
think that the sound construction of the Constitution must allow to 
the national legislature that discretion, with respect to the means by 
which the powers it confers are to be carried into execution, which will 
enable that body to perform the high duties assigned to it, in the 
manner most beneficial to the people." 

After this decision the bank was safe so long as its charter con- 
tinued, though whether or not the charter, which would expire in 1836, 
would be renewed by Congress, was an open question. This de- 
pended upon the will of the people. Following after the decision in 
Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the decision in the case of McCuUoch 
V. Maryland was the court's next important judgment bearing on the 
fundamental organization of the national government. 

Several years later the Supreme Court rendered a decision more 

The court to the liking of the friends of the state banks, when it 

and the ruled that the right of these institutions to issue their 

paper money . , . , . , ^^ . . 

of the state notes to Circulate as money was withm the Constitution, 

banks. jf |^]^g state granting their charters itself held a portion 

of their stock. 

The Supreme Court at about the same time rendered several other 

important decisions bearing upon the rights and powers of the states 

NationaUzing under the Constitution. In the Dartmouth College case, 

decisions of 1819, it was held that a charter granted by a state was 

The*^Dart- ^ Contract, which that state could not change or break, 

mouth Col- because it was forbidden by the Constitution to pass 

icCfC CSS6 

laws "impairing the obligations of contracts." 
The decision in Gibbons v. Ogden, iS24,has been recognized as the 
basis of all subsequent construction of the interstate commerce clause of 
Gibbons the Constitution. In this it was held that the power of 

J). Ogden. Congress to "regulate commerce,. . . among the several 

states" embraced the right to prescribe rules by which the navigation 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 259 

of the great rivers was to be governed, and that therefore the states 
could not control these waters. 

In Fletcher v. Peck, 18 10, the court definitely exercised its power 
to set aside a state law, which was a step in advance of the decision 
in Marbury v. Madison, in which, it will be remembered, jyiartin v 
the supreme tribunal had applied the doctrine of judicial Hunter's 
nullification of laws only to a law of Congress. In Martin 
V. Hunter's Lessee, 1816, the judgment of a state court was reversed. 
"A motive of another kind," it said, "perfectly compatible with the 
most sincere respect for state tribunals, might induce the grant of 
appellate power over their decisions. That motive is the importance 
and even necessity of uniformity of decisions throughout the whole 
United States, upon all subjects within the purview of the Constitu- 
tion. Judges of equal learning and integrity, in different states, 
might differently interpret a statute, or a treaty of the United States, 
or even the Constitution itself. If there were no revising authority 
to control these jarring and discordant judgments, and harmonize 
them into uniformity, the laws, the treaties, and the Constitution of 
the United States would be different in different states, and might, 
perhaps, never have precisely the same construction, obligation, or 
efficacy in any two states. The public mischiefs that would attend 
such a state of things would be truly deplorable." 

The Supreme Court w^s proving a tower of strength for nationalism, 
against which the adherents of states' rights could do The ju^j. 
nothing but object, for they had no means at all compar- "ary a 
able to the power of the court, of controlling the form of of national- 
the national government and the extent of its legitimate '^™- 
activities. 

The protective tariff, though widely approved under Monroe, did 
not under Adams continue to enjoy the favor of all sections. A new 
law extending the system and raising the rates was passed Reaction 
in 1818 and another in 1824; another, known as "The against the 
Tariff of Abominations," in which the high-water mark of 
protective tariff legislation down to the Civil War was reached, was 
passed in 182S, but this met with bitter opposition. 

South Carolina led the opposition. To express her remonstrance 
against "The Tariff of Abominations," the state legis- The "Expo- 
lature passed the celebrated "Exposition and Protest," sition and 

. Protest " of 

prepared for it by Vice President Calhoun. Formerly an South 
ardent nationalist, champion of loose construction of the Carolina. 
Constitution, and upholder of the Union of the states, at the close of 
the War of 181 2, Calhoun now came forward as the champion of states' 



26o 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



rights, strict construction, nullification of the laws of Congress by the 
states, and possible secession. He was not an orator, but with resist- 
less logic he forged arguments for his new position which had a powerful 
influence throughout the South in his own day and down to the Civil 

War. After him, advocates of his 
principles had little to do in the 
way of argument beyond quoting 
his words. "The good people of 
the commonwealth," ran the "Ex- 
position and Protest," "believe 
that the powers of Congress were 
delegated to it, in trust, for the ac- 
complishment of certain specified 
objects, which limit and control 
them; and that every exercise of 
them, for any other purposes is a 
violation of the Constitution, as 
unwarrantable as the undisguised 
assumption of substantive inde- 
pendent powers, not granted or 
expressly withheld." The docu- 
ment maintained that to lay a tax 
for the benefit of manufacturers 
was not a power delegated to Con- 
gress, and that such a protective 
tariff was therefore unconstitu- 
tional. Calhoun urged further- 
more that his native state should 
^ hold a state convention to decide 

how the tariff law "ought to be declared null and void within the 
limits of the state." 

Circumstances had altered South Carolina's attitude toward a 
protective tariff, and Calhoun had changed with his section. In 1816 
South Carolina favored the tariff because she hoped to 
ofsouth build up manufacturing industries within her borders, 

^^fo^jP^'^ particularly cotton manufacturing; but the ignorant 
black slaves proved unfit for the factory, and profitable 
manufacturing with such labor was found to be an impossibility. 
The state saw with dismay the progress of manufacturing in New 
England under the stimulus of the tariff, and the belief grew upon her 
that the Federal Union was working to the injury of the South, that the 
benefits of the Union were accruing to the North and its burdens to the 




John C. Calhoun 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 261 

South. The Southerners felt that, while in the colonial days their 
colonies had been the seat of power and riches beyond anything in the 
North, they were now being outstripped by the commercial North- 
east. In the year 1760 the foreign imports of Virginia and South 
Carolina exceeded those of New York and New England together. 
In 182 1 those of South Carolina were practically the same as in 1760, 
while New York's in the same interval had increased over one hundred 
fold, to $23,000,000; in 1832 New York's imports stood at $57,000,000, 
those of Virginia at $500,000, and those of South Carolina at $1,250,000. 
This disproportionate growth of the sections led to the view that there 
was an "incompatibility of interest" between the North and the 
South, and that Southerners were justified in opposing what they 
considered oppressive Federal laws, passed through northern influence. 
Another aspect of the situation added to the irritation. The cotton- 
growing interests of South Carolina were feeling the competition of 
the agricultural sections of the Southwest. The manufacturing 
Northeast and the agricultural Northwest supplemented one another, 
but the Southeast and the Southwest, both agricultural, instead of 
supplementing one another, were in actual rivalry. The strain of 
hard times thus produced, increased the bitterness of South Carolina 
against the tariff. 

Finally, the spirit of sectionalism in Congress prevented the adoption 
by the national government of the general policy of internal improve- 
ments, already rejected by three administrations, but now Reaction 
favored by the President. Presidents Jefferson, Madison, against 
and Monroe had opposed the construction of internal internal im- 
improveraents at the expense of the nation, as not author- provements. 
ized by the strict letter of the Constitution. John Quincy Adams was 
a President of broad national views, willing and eager to commit the 
nation to such a policy, but the country was reacting from its burst 
of nationalism and Congress in its turn held back. Speaking of the 
Cumberland Road in his first annual message, Adams exclaimed, "To 
how many thousand of our countrymen has it proved a benefit! To 
what single individual has it ever proved an injury?" He would 
have Congress spend millions in building government roads, canals, and 
other improvements. If President Adams had had his way, the 
United States would probably own to-day the railroads and canals and 
many of the wagon roads of the country; but Congress would take no 
action. 

In addition to the constitutional arguments against expenditure 
of national funds for internal improvements, the conditions of the 
times were bringing forward new objections. The South in general 



262 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

stood opposed to the policy, for as an agricultural section she had no 
such interest in the development of a rival agricultural section in the 
West and in the development of transportation facilities thither, as had 
the North, which was finding a market for manufactured goods in the 
. . newly settled regions. Another reason for opposition to 

to President President Adams's schemes was the willingness of the rival 

Adams's commercial cities and states of the seaboard, in pursuance 

policy. ' ^ 

of their own advantage, to undertake internal improve- 
ments themselves. Already they were engaged in the task. Each was 
struggling to improve its own transportation facilities with the West, 
in order to secure that great and growing market for itself. Thus 
an improved transportation system was springing into existence, and 
the increased interaction of the East and the West was assured. 

The merchants of the City of New York perceived that it would 
be a source of profit to them if they could bring it about, that the 
The Erie grain and other food products of the West should come 

Canal of to their city for distribution, that the West should buy 

its necessary supplies in New York, and that immi- 
grants bound for the West should traverse their state. They induced 
the state to build a canal four feet deep, forty feet wide, and three 
hundred and sixty miles long, from Albany on the Hudson to Buffalo 
on Lake Erie, in order to afford continuous water communication 
by river and canal from New York City to the Great Lakes. Con- 
struction was begun July 4, 1817, and amid great enthusiasm the work 
was declared completed in 1825, when Governor De Witt Clinton of 
New York poured a keg of water from Lake Erie into the waters of the 
Atlantic at New York. The undertaking cost originally $7,000,000 
and has been improved from time to time. Within late years $101,- 
000,000 has been voted by the state for further improvement of 
its great canal system. 

The building of the Erie Canal was one of the shrewdest things the 
merchants of New York ever did to advance their interests. Anyone 
The benefits might navigate a boat on the new thoroughfare by the 
of the canal, payment of a small fee, and so large was the volume of 
traffic that in a short time, in spite of the low rates of toll, the pro- 
ceeds paid for the entire cost of construction and furnished a surplus for 
improvements. A ton of flour which formerly required several weeks 
for conveyance from Albany to Buffalo at a cost of $100 or more, 
now went through in as many days for $10. The population of New 
York City in ten years increased from 124,000 to 203,000, while along 
the route of the canal Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, and other centers 
also experienced sudden prosperity. Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, and 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 



263 



Chicago on the Great Lakes entered upon a rapid growth, and for the 
first time began to rival the river cities of Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and 
St. Louis. St. Louis and New Orleans suffered, for the western farmers, 
who had formerly sought their market down the Mississippi to New 




Canal Boat in 1825 

Orleans, preferred the New York market and gradually diverted thither 
a large part of their shipments. Another important result of the canal 
was the jealous imitation aroused in the other cities on the coast. 

Philadelphia could not sit still while the new western trade was 
slipping away to her rival on the Hudson. July 4, 1826, a few months 
after the completion of New York's canal, the Quaker Phiiadel- 
City had occasion to rejoice when the state of Penn- p^^ ^ canal, 
sylvania began the construction of a canal in her interests, which was 
finished in nine years, stretching across the state from Philadelphia 
to Pittsburg. For a part of the way the boats of the canal were 
carried over the mountains by a specially constructed inclined railway. 
A rise in the ground of two thousand feet over a distance of three 
hundred and twenty miles had to be conquered, which made the 
work more difiicult of construction than that in New York, where the 
rise in the ground over a distance of three hundred and sixty miles 
was only five hundred feet. 



264 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

Not to be outdone, Baltimore, farther south, on July 4, 1828, began 
the construction of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to the Ohio Valley. 
Canals for Boston, too, unwilling to be left out of the race, planned 
Baltimore to tunnel through the mountains of western Massachu- 
an OS on. gg^^g^ ^q gecure canal connections with the West for her 
interests; and the Hoosac Tunnel was accordingly constructed, but 
when completed in 1874 was utilized by a railroad and not by a 
canal. 

The new canals were hardly in working .order when a rival appeared 
which was destined to supplant them almost entirely. The initial 
A rival of Contest between canal and railroad was begun at Bal ti- 
the canals. more, where on July 4, 1828, the very day when work on 
the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal was started, a rival company began 
to lay down on the ground two continuous smooth rails, over which 
an engine and cars were to run by steam. 

George Stephenson, a British engineer, invented the first steam 
locomotive in 1814, and in 1825 succeeded in putting into operation in 
The early Great Britain the first steam railway for the transportation 

railroads. ^f ]^Qi\y freight and passengers. The first engine to run 

successfully in the United States was built in 1830 by an American, 
Peter Cooper, for the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. The new rail- 
road was slow in construction and did not reach the Ohio River until 
1853; but the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal never got beyond Cumber- 
land, Maryland, and although still in operation it has never been a 
decided success. As a rival of the canal system of Pennsylvania, the 
Pennsylvania Railroad was begun in 1845, and in nine years suc- 
ceeded in establishing connections from Philadelphia as far west as 
Pittsburg. So successful was the road that it soon bought out the 
state canals and in the end abandoned their operation entirely. Bos- 
ton's projected canal was supplanted by the line which is now known 
as the Fitchburg Division of the Boston and Maine. The New York 
Central Railroad never succeeded in driving the Erie Canal out of 
business, for so large is the traffic from the West through New York 
State that at times railroads and canals together accommodate it with 
difficulty. 

Says Professor Coman, comparing canals and railroads: "Canal traf- 
fic was safe and cheap, but slow and liable to be interrupted by slack 
water, floods, or frost. The Erie Canal, for example, 
orify^of'raii- freezes over in winter, and navigation is stopped for 
roads over from four to five months in the year. A railroad can be 
built through mountainous country at one-third the cost 
of a canal, and over heights to which water cannot be conducted. A 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 



265 



car run on wheels, fitted to the iron track, encounters less friction 
than a wagon on a turnpike, less resistance than a boat in water." 

After the steamboat the steam locomotive was the modern world's 
next great improvement in methods of transportation. The pre- 
diction that the United States would some day break up The Union 
because of long distances and consequent lack of common strengthened, 
interests was losing its force. The new method of transportation 




" De Witt Clinton " and Train 

The first train in the state of New York, operated in 1831 between Albany and 

Schenectady. 

could conquer nature as turnpikes and canals never could. The 
latter merely facilitated commerce along existing or natural routes of 
trade. Methods more ambitious were needed to connect the East 
with the growing West. 

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1828 

John Quincy Adams came to the presidency a firm believer in 

strong national powers, like those favored by Congress after the War 

of 181 2, but every one of his cherished measures failed, 

because large sections of the country had come to repu- of President 

diate such policies. Sectionalism had succeeded nation- Adams's 

'^ measures, 

alism, "hard feelings" had taken the place of "good 

feelings." For Adams the "times were out of joint." He had failed 

to secure the backing of the country in his attitude toward the Panama 

Congress and in his treatment of the Indians, and though favored 

by him the national bank, the national tariff, and national internal 

improvements had fallen into disrepute. 



266 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

When the presidential year of 1828 came round, there was still the 
single Democratic-Republican or National-Republican party, split, 
The Presi- however, into two factions headed respectively by Presi- 
dential eiec- dent Adams and Andrew Jackson. The congressional 
^°^ ° ■ caucus method of nominating the President having been 
thoroughly discredited in the contest of 1824, the legislatures of the 
various states temporarily exercised this function. Jackson's cam- 
paign for 1828 began in the first year of Adams's presidency with his 
nomination by the legislature of his own state of Tennessee. The 
movement, carefully nurtured by the cry of "bargain and corrup- 
tion" arising out of the struggle of 1S24, was promoted from time to 
time by the legislatures of many other states. Several northern 
legislatures renominated President Adams. 

Every effort was made to keep Jackson before the public as a 
military hero, who had been cheated out of the presidency in 1824 
by the fraud of the politicians and deserved vindica- 
tion. His enemies instanced against him his duels and 
quarrels, recounted his alleged though never proved connection with 
the conspiracy of Aaron Burr, and his arbitrary military executions 
while governor of the territory of Florida. The issue was personal, 
and Andrew Jackson, "the people's idol," was elected by 178 electoral 
votes to 83 for Adams. Calhoun was reelected Vice President. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

McMaster, United States, V; D. C. Oilman, James Monroe; Morse, Jolm Quincy 
Adams; Schurz, Henry Clay, I, 126-310. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Monroe Doctrine. T. B. Edgington, Monroe Doctrine; Beard, Ameri- 
can Government and Politics, 32>2>~Z3Tj Contemporaries, III, 494-501; J. B. Moore, 
American Diplomacy, 131-167; Old South Leajlcts, III, 56; Epochs, V, 133-143; F. E. 
Chadwick, Relations of the United States and Spain, 14S-204; Paxson, Independence 
of the South American Republics. 

2. The Missouri Compromise. Turner, Neic West, 149-171; Epochs, V, 147- 
153; Rhodes, United States, I, 29-39; Harding, Orations, 191-211. 

3. John Marshall and the Supreme Court. J. B. Thayer, John Marshall; 
A. B. Magruder, John Marshall; C. Warren, American Bar, 402-405. 

4. The Erie Canal. Hulbert, Historic Highways, XIV; McMaster, United 
Slates, IV, 415-418 and V, 132-138; Turner, New West, 32-36; Epochs, V, 161-175; 
Sparks, Expansion, 259-269. 

5. The First Railroads. Dunbar, Travel in America, see index; Sparks, Ex- 
pansion. 



REACTION AGAINST NATIONALISM 267 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

How do you account for the rise and for the decline of the era of good feeling? 
Why was there so little opposition to the annexation of Florida? Compare Jefferson's 
motives in seeking the purchase of Louisiana and those of Monroe in announcing the 
Monroe Doctrine. What was the influence of the Declaration of Independence on 
slavery? of the Constitution? of the industrial revolution? of the cotton gin? How 
do you account for the failure of the great measures of the administration of J. Q. 
Adams? Did Vice President Calhoun break his oath of office to support the Consti- 
tution when he wrote the "Exposition and Protest"? What can you say in favor of 
the proposition that John Marshall was one of the great statesmen of the country in 
the first part of the nineteenth century? Why was the Supreme Court unpopular 
while IMarshall presided over it? Was South Carolina justified in her attitude toward 
the tarifif in 1828? What were the leading issues in current politics before the people 
in the presidential campaigns of 1816, 1820, 1824, and 1828? 



CHAPTER XIX 
JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 

THE SPOILS SYSTEM 

Andrew Jackson, the first frontier President, proved to be one of 
the strongest Presidents in the history of the country. He was born 
Andrew of Scotch-Irish immigrant parents at Waxhaw in north- 

jackson. gj.^^ South Carolina in the year 1767; and like Henry 

Clay, as a young man he joined the westward movement, settling 

in eastern Tennessee. By his 
prowess against the Creek, Chero- 
kee, and Seminole Indians, and 
against the British at New Or- 
leans, he made himself the hero of 
the western frontier and indeed of 
the whole Union. He lacked not 
only the culture and education of 
the schools but also the training in 
statesmanship which his predeces- 
sors in the presidential ofl&ce had 
possessed; but as a plain man of 
the people he knew the needs of 
the people, and as a trained man 
of action he succeeeded in admin- 
istering the government in their 
favor with military directness. He 
was as honest as the day is long; 
his genius for command was al- 
most superhuman; and the people 
followed him as they had followed 
no other leader since Jefferson. Clay, Webster, Adams, and the other 
prominent men of the time, even Vice President Calhoun, figure in 
the story of his "reign" merely as his opponents. Few strong men 
took a place in his cabinet. 

The administration of Jackson ushered in an even more democratic 
era than that of Jefferson. The people regarded Jackson as their 

268 




Andrew Jackson 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 269 

special representative, and came to Washington in crowds to see him 
inaugurated. Daniel Webster described the demonstra- t,. 

<-" _ _ Ihe new 

tions at the inauguration as follows: "I never saw such regime of 
a crowd before. Persons have come hundreds of miles to ^mocracy. 
see General Jackson and they really seem to think that the country is 
rescued from some dreadful danger. At the White House the crowds 
upset the pails of punch, broke the glasses, and stood with their muddy 
boots in the satin-covered chairs to see the people's President." 

A large number of these visitors to Washington were office-seekers, 
and in the interest of this class Jackson disregarded the excellent ex- 
ample of his predecessors in the matter of appointments to The spoils 
office. Hundreds of office-holders, who had occupied their system, 
posts for many years and were therefore both experienced and efficient, 
he removed from office for the single reason that they did not belong 
to his faction and had not voted for him, and gave their places to the 
"boys" who had supported him. The "boys" were most of them 
inexperienced and many of them inefficient, but that made no difference 
to Jackson, who believed that "to the victor belong the spoils." This 
was the celebrated "spoils system," which for the next fifty years was 
more instrumental than any other one influence in rendering public 
service inefficient. It is a thoroughly unbusinesslike system, which 
the present civil service reform is now gradually undermining; yet, 
when measured by the standards of his contemporaries, Jackson must 
be relieved of a part of the odium that would otherwise attach to his 
name for adopting it, for his attitude toward the public service was a 
common one in his day. The spoils system in fact was introduced 
into national politics from the state politics of New York and Penn- 
sylvania. 

John Adams had not removed the appointees of Washington; 

Jefferson, leading a new party into power in 1801, did not remove all 

the Federal office-holders, but only a restricted number, The attitude 

in order, as he said, to even up the two parties in the of former 

Presidents 
control of the offices. As the Democratic-Republican toward the 

administrations continued, more and more Federalists "^^ service, 
were weeded out, until at last most of the national offices were held 
by members of the single dominant party. When the Democratic- 
Republicans began to break up into factions under John Quincy 
Adams, that President refused to advance his own political fortunes, 
by removing from office those who were opposed to him. What 
Adams refused to do, Jackson had no scruples in doing. 



270 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



ster-Hayne 
debate. 



THE TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION 

The sectionalism which had been rapidly developing since about 
1820 was still rampant. Less than a year after Jackson took up 
The Web- ^^^ "^^"^^ °^ ofl&ce, a great constitutional debate on the 
nature of the Union took place in the United States 
Senate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and 
Robert Hayne of South Carolina. The immediate occasion of the 

debate was a motion by 



a Senator from Connecticut 
that the government for the 
time being should desist from 
further sale of public lands in 
the West. The motion was 
looked upon as springing from 
"jealousy of the West and a 
desire to retard its growth," 
and was opposed by both 
western and southern mem- 
bers. Already aroused 
against the national govern- 
ment and especially against 
New England, as a result of 
the tariff controversy of 1828, 
the South was ready to join 
another section in resistance 
to the control of national 
policy by the commercial 
Northeast. 

Hayne left the immediate 
subject of the land sales to 
launch into a bitter attack upon New England, and ended with an elo- 
quent outburst in support of Calhoun's "Exposition and 
Webster's • <• 

attack on Protest" of 1828. Webster replied as the champion of 

states' New England, and delivered one of the greatest orations 

in the history of Congress. He opened with a spirited 
defense of his section, and then, turning to Hayne's exposition of 
states' rights, sought to arouse the enthusiasm of his hearers for the 
national Union and for the Supreme Court as the common judge be- 
tween the Union and the states. He pointed out the absurdities of the 
arguments of Calhoun and eloquently pictured the benefits of Union. 
According to his view, the people and not the states made the Consti- 




Daniel Webster 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 271 

tution and declared it to be the supreme law of the land; the general 
government was not the mere agent of the states but was supreme 
over them by the Constitution. He poured ridicule on the idea that 
the United States was '"'servant of four and twenty masters, of different 
wills and different purposes and yet bound to obey all. . . . It so hap- 
pens that at the very moment when South Carolina resolves that the 
tariff laws are unconstitutional, Pennsylvania and Kentucky resolve 
exactly the reverse. . . . Does not this approach absurdity? . . . It is too 
plain to be argued. Four and twenty interpreters of constitutional law, 
each with a power to decide for itself, and none with authority to bind 
anybody else, and this constitutional law the only bond of their Union! " 

When a state law came into conflict with a law of the United States, 
the difference, Webster declared, should be decided by the Supreme 
Court, as the Constitution itself provided, and not by Abhorrence 
the states. For a state to decide for itself to annul a na- °^ "^^ *^'■• 
tional law would amount to a challenge to the authorities of the United 
States to rise up and assert themselves in defense of the Union, the 
direct result of which would be a lamentable collision between force 
and force. This the orator could not sanction. "While the Union 
lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before 
us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the 
veil. God grant that in my day at least, that curtain may not rise. 
God grant that on my vision may never be opened what lies beyond. 
When my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last time, the Sun in 
Heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored 
fragments of a once glorious Union; on states dissevered, discordant, 
belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in 
fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, 
behold the glorious ensign of the republic, now known and honored 
throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies 
streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a 
single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable inter- 
rogatory as 'What is all this worth? ' nor those other words of delusion 
and folly, 'Liberty first and Union afterwards;' but everywhere spread 
all over in characters of living light blazing on all its ample folds, as 
they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under 
the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American 
heart, 'Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable! ' " 

When in 1832 a tariff law was passed with rates slightly lower than 
those of 1828 but still displeasing to the Southerners, South south Caro 
Carolina assumed the lead of the dissatisfied sections and Una's state 
called a state convention to consider the situation. convention. 



272 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

The old military chieftain at the head of the government was not 
the man to tolerate insubordination when it was his sworn duty to 
Vigorous enforce obedience. His toast at a banquet in honor of 

action by the Thomas Jefferson was, "The Federal Union, it must be 
preserved;" and to a certain partisan of states' rights 
and nullification he threatened that he "would hang him higher 
than Haman" if he persisted in his course. Without referring the 
matter to Congress, as many a President would have done, Jackson 
sent United States troops to South Carolina's chief port at Charleston 
to collect the duty at all hazards. He might have called out the state 
militia, as Washington had done at the time of the whisky insur- 
rection, but the unfortunate experiences of President Madison with 
that branch of the military service in New England during the War 
of 1812-1815 did not recommend such a course. 

In spite of the presence of the troops the convention of the dis- 
satisfied state came together, and basing its action on the theory 
The Ordi- °^ States' rights of the Virginia and Kentucky Resolu- 
nance of tions, the Hartford Convention, and Calhoun's "Expo- 

sition and Protest," gave to that theory a practical 
demonstration by passing an Ordinance of Nullification. This Ordi- 
nance, passed in November, 1832, declared the tariff laws of the 
United States null and void within the limits of the state of South 
Carolina, forbade the citizens of the state to pay the tariff duties, 
and threatened that the state would secede from the Union if 
the national government persisted in collecting the duty. The 
theory of states' rights had received the most complete expression it 
was destined to receive down to the actual secession of the Southern 
States in 1860-1861. It was known that the neighboring Southern 
States shared the sentiments of South Carolina, though they had not 
taken the same action. The President replied to the ordinance in a 
ringing proclamation, pointing out that it was his duty "to take care 
that the laws be faithfully executed," and warning the people of South 
Carolina of "the danger they will incur by obedience to the illegal and 
disorganizing ordinance of the convention." Congress backed up the 
President by the passage of the Force Act, giving him unusual powers 
to collect the duties in a special customhouse, even in a floating 
customhouse on board a ship in the harbor, if that proved necessary; 
and on the same day, in March, 1833, under the leadership of Clay, 
Congress passed a Compromise Tariff Act which would gradually 
lower the rates. The convention of the state then repealed its Ordinance 
of Nullification, but attempted to preserve a show of spirit by adopting 
a useless ordinance nullifying the Force Act. 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 273 

The new compromise tarifif provided for a lowering of the rates 
from year to year down to 1842, when in comparison with the existing 
rates of 1833 they would be quite moderate. Though jhe Com- 
the question of states' rights was by no means settled, promise of 
each side in the controversy claimed a victory, for while 
the state succeeded in securing a lowering of the duties, the President 
and Congress prevented the actual refusal of any individual citizen of 
South Carolina to pay the tarifif. The reaction against a national tarifif 
had reached its height and been checked, and a valuable lesson had been 
taught to sectionalists, nullificationists, and secessionists as to the 
meaning and practical outcome of their doctrines. 

An important phase of the episode was the precedent set by the 
President of the United States in favor of vigorous executive action, 
if ever again a state should assume to carry its dispute 
with the national government to the point of open dis- dent for vig- 
obedience. When this sad result did come to pass less °F°^^ execu- 
than thirty years later, the President of that day was 
far less vigorous in defense of the Union, and the people of the loyal 
States sighed, "Oh! for an hour of Andrew Jackson!" 

THE BANK, INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS, AND THE INDIANS 

After this vindication of the national honor President Jackson set- 
tled other questions more to the liking of the states' rights element. 
The decision of the Supreme Court in favor of the con- q ^j^ ^ 
stitutionality of the national bank in the case of McCul- to the na- 
loch V. Maryland did not put an end to the opposition of *^°° ^ ' 
the state banks. They were jealous of the greater security of the 
larger institution, of its power over the smaller banks, and of its 
privilege of receiving the money of the United States on deposit and 
lending it out at interest. The great bank was to them a "wicked 
monopoly," and all sorts of illegal practices, including bribery at 
elections, were charged against it. President Jackson believed in 
the truth of the accusations and willingly used his influence for its 
destruction. 

In the presidential election of 1832 the two rival candidates of the 
once dominant Democratic-Republican party were President Jackson 
and Henry Clay. The latter forced the issue of the -phe bank 
renewal of the charter of the bank as the leading ques- ^^d the 
tion of the campaign by counseling his followers in contest" f 
Congress, who were in a majority, to pass a bill renewing ^^^2. 
the charter four years before its expiration, in order to place Jackson 
in the difficult position of signing or vetoing the bill on the eve of the 



274 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

presidential campaign. Clay was of the opinion that the President, 
though outspoken in his opposition to the bank, would not dare to veto 
the bill for the re-charter through fear of the political consequences, 
while executive approval of the bill would lay the President open to the 
charge of inconsistency. True to his stand Jackson vetoed the bill, 
and contrary to Clay's expectations he was nevertheless triumphantly 
reelected. Seven electoral votes were cast for William Wirt, the 
candidate of the Anti-Masonic party, organized in opposition to the 
fraternal order of Masons, eleven for John Floyd, an independent 
candidate, forty-nine for Clay, and two hundred and nineteen for 
Jackson. 

Interpreting his success at the polls as popular approval of his 
attitude toward the bank, Jackson attempted to destroy the institu- 
. . tion entirely, before the expiration of its charter. He 

drawai of ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to deposit no more 

men^°depos- rnoney of the nation with the hated monopoly, but 
its from the rather in certain designated state banks, thereupon nick- 
named "pet banks." The bank of the United States, 
though not at once ruined, dragged out a weak existence till the expi- 
ration of its charter in 1836, and after that date lived on a few years 
under a charter from the state of Pennsylvania. Again the states 
were in control of the banking business of the country. 

The Senate of the United States passed a vote of censure upon 
Jackson to the effect "that the President, in the late executive proceed- 
The Presi- ings in relation to the public revenue, has assumed upon 
dent censured, himself authority and power not conferred by the Con- 
stitution and laws, but in derogation of both." The President replied 
in a dignified protest, in which he claimed, first, that he possessed full 
power to give orders to the Secretary of the Treasury, who was only 
his clerk; and second, that the only constitutional way for the Senate 
to censure the President was to sit as a court of impeachment to try 
charges brought against him by the House of Representatives, which 
would give the accused the opportunity to defend himself, denied to 
Jackson by the vote of censure. Three years later the Senate ex- 
punged the resolution of censure from its journal. 

When the question of internal improvements at the nation's expense 
came before President Jackson, he took the stand that Jefferson, 
Jackson and Madison, and Monroe had taken before him. In May, 
the Maysviiie 1830, Congress sent to him for approval a bill, called the 
°* ' Maysviiie Road Bill, authorizing and requiring the govern- 
ment to take stock in a turnpike road stretching from Maysviiie, Ken- 
tucky, on the Ohio River, to Lexington, Kentucky. The project was 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 275 

designed by Clay, who with Albert Gallatin had taken the lead in 
pushing the Cumberland Road and now proposed the new road as the 
first section of an extension of that thoroughfare from the Ohio to 
New Orleans. The President vetoed the bill on the ground that the 
national government could not take such action till an amendment was 
added to the Constitution giving it power in definite terms. In addi- 
tion to the constitutional objection, the President may have been 
moved to opposition by the fact that it was in Clay's own state that 
the improvement was to originate; and he may also have foreseen that 
the policy of expenditure along such lines might serve as an argument 
for a protective tariff, in that the former would relieve the embarrass- 
ment of an overflowing treasury occasioned by the latter. 

Jackson's position regarding the Maysville Road Bill was somewhat 
inconsistent with his action in signing other bills of a similar nature, 
though these were for the improvement of rivers and other 
harbors and not for the construction of roads. He was projects, 
sufficiently conversant with the needs of the frontier to know that 
improved means of communication were imperative, but he advocated 
the accomplishment of this end by the states and was in favor of dis- 
tributing to them the growing surplus in the United States treasury. 
The fact that a few of the states and certain private enterprises were 
already successfully engaged in carrying on the desired improvements 
lent support to the President's stand. 

When Jackson came into office, the state of Georgia was still engaged 
in its struggle to remove the Creek and Cherokee Indians from its 
borders to the regions west of the Mississippi. In con- 
trast to President Adams, who vainly attempted to of the in- 
defend the Indians against what he considered unfair ^^^^^ f''*'™ 

(jcorfiris. 

treatment, Jackson, who knew from experience how the 
presence of the Indians hindered the settlement of the country, upheld 
the state at every step. To assert its jurisdiction over the lands of the 
Cherokees, the courts of Georgia tried a Cherokee, Corn Tassels by 
name, for murder, and found him guilty. Against the order of the 
Supreme Court of the United States the officials of the state put the 
culprit to death, and the President did not interfere. On another 
occasion a certain missionary was arrested and convicted by the state 
for entering, without state license, upon the lands held by the Indians, 
and was kept in prison in defiance of the Supreme Court of the United 
States. Again the President refused to uphold the court. "John 
Marshall has made his decision," he is reported to have said; "now 
let him enforce it." Disheartened, the Cherokees at last gave up 
their lands to the United States for a stipulated sum and consented to 



276 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

removal to Indian Territory, which Jackson recommended to be set 
aside for the Indian tribes. 

Though it is one of the duties of the President to enforce the decisions 
of the Supreme Court as the final interpretation of the laws of the land, 
^ . Jackson maintained that the decisions of the court 

President 

Jackson and bound no branch of the government except the judicial 
c'urt"^'^^"^^ branch; that the Executive, in fact, had quite as much 
right as the court to decide upon the constitutionality of 
laws and to enforce its own views rather than those of the court when 
there was a conflict of opinion. Daniel Webster, in criticism of this 
opinion, called the President's opinion "wild" and "disorganizing." 
"The Constitution declares," said Webster, "that every public oflficer, 
in the state governments as well as in the national governments, shall 
take an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. This 
is all. Would it not have cast an air of ridicule upon the whole pro- 
vision, if the Constitution had gone on to add the words, 'as he under- 
stands it ' ? What would have come nearer a solemn farce than to 
bind a man by oath, and still leave him to be the interpreter of his own 
obligation?" Jackson's attitude has been discredited, but he main- 
tained it consistently to the end of his presidency. 

Before Jackson went out of oflfice five of the seven judges of the 
Supreme Court were of his appointment. Chief Justice Marshall, 
Changes in ^^^ ^^^ been appointed by John Adams in 1801, died in 
the Supreme 1 83 5, and was succeeded by Roger B. Taney of Maryland. 
As Secretary of the Treasury during the bank contro- 
versy, Taney had supported President Jackson, and his elevation to 
the chief justiceship was regarded as a political reward. He ranks 
second only to his great predecessor in the profoundness of his legal 
reasoning and the lucidity and power of his decisions. As recon- 
stituted by Jackson, the nationalizing influence of the court was 
temporarily checked. 

In two instances there was open war with the Indians in Jackson's 
time. The first was with the Sacs and Foxes of the Northwest. The 
War with savages of this region first clashed with the advancing 

the Sacs tide of white settlement in Ohio, where they were defeated 

an oxes. ^_^ General Wayne in 1794; then farther west in Indiana, 
where they were overcome by General Harrison in 1811; and now in 
1832 still farther west in Illinois and Wisconsin. Here the usual fate 
was meted out to them, notwithstanding the obstinate stand of their 
leader, Blackhawk. One of the soldiers of the frontier militia of 
Illinois at this time was Abraham Lincoln, and one of the United 
States regulars was Jefferson Davis. 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 277 

The second Indian war of Jackson's administration was with the 

Seminoles of Florida. Since their conquest by Jackson himself in 18 18, 

these Indians had retreated far down into the peninsula; ^ 

, . „ , , . 1 1 iir • The second 

and m 1835 they protested agamst removal to the West m war against 

a war which proved longer and more bitter than the usual ^® . . 

Indian outbreaks. The conflict opened with a massacre of 

over one hundred United States soldiers, and was waged with great 

bitterness on both sides for eight years. Hundreds of lives were lost and 

over $30,000,000 expended in putting down the uprising. The remnants 

of the Seminoles were at last forcibly removed beyond the Mississippi. 

FOREIGN AFFAIRS 

It might be supposed that the annexation of Louisiana and Florida 
by the United States would have put the state of Mexico on the lookout 
against any such fate for her own territory. Perhaps the . 
friendly Monroe Doctrine had thrown Mexico off her to the Mexi- 
guard. She refused cash offers for the cession of Texas, can province 
when tendered to her first by President John Quincy 
Adams and later by President Andrew Jackson. She preferred to 
develop Texas under her own flag. To this end, not realizing the 
inevitable result, she freely invited the citizens of the United States 
to come and live in her northern province, offering them large grants 
of land at the wonderfully cheap rate of twelve and one-half cents per 
acre. The price in the United States after 1820 for farms on the 
public domain was ten times as great. Hundreds seized the oppor- 
tunity, and only after it was too late did the Mexicans attempt to stem 
the tide. It was like the irresistible march of settlers across Ohio, 
Indiana, and Illinois, or through Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. 

Conflict with the Mexicans was an unavoidable consequence. It 
could not be expected that citizens of the United States, with Anglo- 
Saxon blood in their veins and with the independent spirit ^j^^ ■^^^^_ 
of frontiersmen, would feel loyalty to the weak and shift- pendence of 
ing government of Mexico. Once settled in the province ^^^^' 
of Texas, the immigrants quarreled with the native inhabitants, broke 
into open rebellion, and on March 2, 1836, declared Texas a free and 
independent state. The Texas War of Independence opened with a 
terrible massacre by the Mexicans of one hundred and fifty Texans at 
the Alamo, an old Spanish mission building in San Antonio, Texas, and 
closed with the battle of San Jacinto, in which the insurgents under 
General Sam Houston won a notable victory over President Santa Anna 
and his Mexican followers. Six hundred Mexicans were killed in the 
battle, two hundred injured, and Santa Anna made prisoner. Houston 



278 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

was made President of the new Republic of Texas, and in spite of the 
fact that Mexico still claimed Texas as her own, the President and 
Congress of the United States recognized the independence of the 
revolted state. After such an unfriendly act by the United States, 
the neighboring sister republic and the nations farther south began to 
question the sincerity of the Monroe Doctrine. 

Although not a diplomat, Jackson scored a triumph in foreign 
The opening dealings where other Presidents had failed. He was sue- 
up of the cessful in inducing Great Britain at last to do away with 
Indies to the regulations which had barred United States vessels 
tr^^®- from the trade of the West Indies since the days of the 
Revolution. The victory, however, was largely a barren one, because 
the West Indian trade, important to New England in colonial times, was 
no longer so highly desirable as formerly. Not only was capital being 
diverted from shipping into manufacturing, but the once coveted sugar 
and molasses were being supplied in increasing quantities from Loui- 
siana. Moreover, subsequent events in the islands themselves soon 
diminished their commercial importance, for their labor system was 
undermined by the abolition of slavery in the British colonies in 1833 
and British trade discriminations in their favor ceased with the adop- 
tion of free trade in Great Britain in 1846-1849, so that the prosperity 
of the once wealthy British West Indies was soon a thing of the past. 

ECONOMIC PROGRESS 

There had been a slight financial panic in the United States in 1819, 
after which the country entered upon a period of great prosperity, which 
General lasted to the end of Jackson's presidency. John Quincy 

prosperity. Adams declared of this prosperity that it was "as large 
and liberal as the indulgence of Heaven has ever granted to the im- 
perfect state of man upon earth." The crops were bountiful, especially 
that of cotton, which increased in the new Southwest from 500,000 to 
900,000 bales annually in the short period of President Jackson's second 
term. The national debt of $90,000,000 in 1821 was gradually reduced, 
till by 1834 it was entirely discharged and a surplus was piling up in 
the treasury. At a loss to know what to do with the surplus, Congress 
finally distributed it among the states, to be used as they saw fit. 
Some of the states devoted the gift to the construction of roads and 
canals, some to the improvement of the public school system, and some 
even divided it up among individual citizens. Population grew from 
10,000,000 in 1 82 1 to 12,000,000 in 1830 and 16,000,000 in 1837. The 
most amazing advances in population were in the West, where 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 279 

Michigan, in the same interval of sixteen years, increased her 10,000 
twentyfold, Ohio her 600,000 over twofold, Indiana her 150,000 four- 
fold, Illinois her 60,000 almost sevenfold, and Mississippi her 80,000 
fourfold. Iowa and Wisconsin, uninhabited by whites in 1821, con- 
tained, in 1837, the one 43,000 and the other 30,000 inhabitants. 

No single indication of the wonderful prosperity was more impres- 
sive than the feverish haste with which the new states constructed 
internal improvements. Ohio in a few years built over Extensive 
five hundred miles of state canals, two of them connecting internal im- 
Lake Erie and the Ohio River; Illinois planned thirteen by the 
hundred miles of state-owned railroads, improved the states, 
navigation of five of her rivers, and, in all, actually expended over 
eight million dollars, till her debt amounted to twenty-nine dollars 
for every man, woman, and child in the state. On railroads, canals, 
and rivers the three states of Michigan, Indiana, and Missouri together 
expended almost fifty million dollars. In all the Union, by 1836, over 
1200 miles of railroads had been constructed. The policy of the 
national government in refusing financial aid for these improvements 
seemed justified. In 1820 many states had no state debts whatever 
and all the states together in this year owed but $12,000,000; in 1840 
the sum total of state debts was $200,000,000, most of it incurred for 
internal improvements. 

The whole American people seemed bent on speculation, as is com- 
mon in times of prosperity; and inasmuch as the price of public lands 

was fixed by law at $1.25 per acre and did not vary, while _ , . 

,, 1 . 1 • 1 r -1 Speculation, 

all other prices were on the increase, the favorite specula- 
tion was in these lands. For the decade of the twenties the annual 
land sales averaged only slightly above $1,000,000; in 1834 they 
reached $4,800,000; in 1835, $14,700,000; and in 1836 $24,000,000. 
During Jackson's two administrations the government deposits in the 
state banks rose from $10,000,000 to over $40,000,000. Such heavy 
deposits in the "pet banks" constituted an irresistible temptation to 
many to go into the banking business, in the hope of being favored 
with a portion of the government's money. From 1829 to 1837 the 
number of the state banks more than doubled, their total capital went 
ahead by leaps and bounds, and the number of their paper notes in 
circulation as money expanded from $48,000,000 to $149,000,000. 

The banks so suddenly called into existence were called "wildcat" 
banks, and their currency "wildcat" currency. In the vaults of these 
banks there was practically no gold or silver back of the The " wild- 
notes as security for their redemption; and the people cat banks." 
in their ordinary business transactions accepted the notes at their 



28o 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



face value merely out of their faith in the good name of the local bank 
issuing them and because the United States government so accepted 
them at the land sales and in other government transactions. These 
notes, thus abundantly issued and kept in constant circulation, made 
money plenty, so that speculators borrowed at the banks with ease 
and made their investments with unusual recklessness. The govern- 
ment itself encouraged the "merry-go-round" of money. The "wild- 
cats" were taken in by the government officials at the land sales, were 
by them deposited in the "pet banks," which loaned them out to the 




Chicago in 1832 



speculators again, who in turn presented them again to the government 
at other land sales; and so on in a circle. A day of reckoning was 
to come in the not distant future, which would prove that no money 
was good that did not have actual value behind it. 

Material progress characterized city and country aUke. Hundreds 
of communities were reached by the railroad trains for the first time. 
Progress in and Were thus enabled the better to attract the floating 
the cities. population that was spreading in every direction. Real 
estate values rose tremendously in a general boom. In Mobile, Ala- 
bama, for example, the value of real estate rose from $1,200,000 in 1831 
to $27,000,000 in 1837. In every section the tendency was the same. 
New public improvements spread from city to city. Artificial gas, 
which was first used for illuminating purposes in London in 1814 and 
in Paris in 1820, was introduced in Baltimore in 1816, in Boston in 1822, 
in New York in 1823, and in Philadelphia in 1837. While in 1790 
only four towns in all the United States had systems of public water 
works, in Jackson's time such systems were becoming common. 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 281 

Lowell, Massachusetts, may be taken as typical of the early factory 
towns produced by the industrial revolution in the United States. 
It was incorporated as a town in 1826. In 1820, before a typical fac- 
any factories had been erected there, the population was ^^^^ to-wn. 
about two hundred; factories began to go up by 1822, and in 1825 the 
population was 2500, in 1832 10,000, in 1836 17,500, and in 1844 
25,000. In the year 1836 there were nine cotton factories in the city, 
with a combined capital of $7,000,000, hiring 7000 operatives, of 
whom 5500 were young women and girls. The factories of Lowell at 
this time were three or four stories in height, frequently provided with 
a bell tower or cupola, well lighted and clean, and marvelously unbe- 
grimed with smoke. The sum of $600,000 was already invested in 
canals and locks in the immediate vicinity. 

The factory system, introduced in America at the beginning of the 
century, was well developed by the time of Jackson's presidency. The 
motive power to run the machinery was obtained almost The new fac- 
entirely from the swift river currents. To accommodate *°''y system, 
themselves to the new principles of industrial organization, the working 
classes found it necessary to lay aside the small domestic manufactur- 
ing which they had previously carried on in their scattered and isolated 
homes, and to gather themselves under a common roof, for com- 
mon effort. A new system of labor was evolved, for the concentra- 
tion of artisans meant the appearance in the community of "a 
unique social class, possessed of its own special needs, which 
were different from those of any other class. The factory owners 
soon realized the exigencies of the new situation, and erected both 
boarding houses for the accommodation and protection of the young 
women in their employ and separate tenements for the married em- 
ployees and their families, while at the same time they made gen- 
erous contributions for the support of the schools and churches in the 
community. The employees were frequently paid, in whole or in part, 
in "orders" on the company store, where commodities for their use 
were on sale. A time-table of the Lowell mills for the year 1852 
shows that in the month of June of that year the first bell of the fac- 
tory awakened the operatives at four-thirty in the morning, a second 
bell came at four-fifty, and the day's work began by the third bell, 
early enough to allow of a work period of an hour or so before breakfast. 
Bells rang for the beginning and the end of the breakfast and dinner 
periods of thirty-five minutes each, and the evening bell to stop work 
came at seven. Work, therefore, was long, ranging from twelve to 
fifteen hours per day. 

These first factories were comparatively small, and they disposed 



282 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

of their products under a system of free and unrestricted competition 
with one another, with nothing to suggest the gigantic 
lations be- business corporations and the absence of competition of 
**dTh^^'*^ ^^^ present day. Moreover any one factory was usually 
owned by a single man or a small group of men, who lived 
near the factory and managed its affairs either in person or through an 
agent or superintendent. The relations between capital and labor, if 
not always satisfactory, were on the whole intimate, and the per- 
sonal contact often brought it about that employers took thought for 
the social and moral welfare of the laborers, and the latter realized 
that their interests were bound up with those of capital. 

Still there were conflicts on some occasions between employers and 
employees, as in the extraordinary times of Jackson's administration, 
Labor when prices rose more rapidly than wages. In the con- 

troubles, temporary descriptions of the numerous strikes that 

accompanied the unrest, one reads of the "pickets" and "scabs" that 
figure in present-day strikes, of demands for higher wages, shorter 
hours, cooperative enterprises, and restriction of immigration. Not- 
withstanding the welcome to immigrants, which had been the poUcy 
of the country from the beginning, organized labor now cried out against 
the new arrivals from Europe, who were filling the labor market to 
overflowing and keeping down wages. Riots against the Irish immi- 
grants, who were coming in large numbers to work on the canals and 
railroads, were common occurrences. The first national convention 
of labor unions in the history of the country was held in 1834. 

Many new appliances were introduced in the industrial world during 
this progressive period. Anthracite coal was first used in 1825 to 
New generate steam and in 1837 to smelt iron. In 1836-1838, 

inventions. from the inventive genius of John Ericsson, came the 
new screw propellers on steamboats, and in 1838, though steam ves- 
sels had been in use for some time in the coasting trade, steamships 
began making their first regular trips across the Atlantic, with the 
successful voyages of the Siriiis and the Great Western. The present 
Cunard line was established in 1840. European friction matches came 
into use, and that forerunner of modern photography, the daguerreo- 
type. Between 1840 and 1850 Charles Goodyear gave to the world his 
invention of vulcanized rubber, Dr. William T. G. Morton his discovery 
of the use of ether as an anaesthetic, Elias Howe the sewing machine, 
Richard M. and Peter S. Hoe the modern newspaper printing press, and 
Samuel F. B. Morse the perfected telegraph. The manufacture of edge 
tools, axes, hatchets, chisels, and planes was begun in America in 1826. 

Other labor-saving devices were coming into use which were des- 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 



283 




284 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

tined both to revolutionize farming and at the same time to build up 
Improved manufacturing. The revolving hay-rake, superseding 

agricultural the hand-rake, dates from this time. The first patent 
mac nery. ^^^ ^ mowing machine, to take the place of the old hand 
scythe, was granted to William Manning of New Jersey in 1831, and 
the first patent for a reaping machine was obtained by Obed Hussey 




The Original McCormick Reaper 

of Maryland in 1833. In 1834 came Cyrus H. McCormick's reaper, 
which was to prove as important in the agricultural development of 
the North as Whitney's cotton gin in the development of the South. 
New threshing machines did away with former crude methods, the 
first designs of seed drills and cultivators came into use, and commer- 
cial fertilizers for the first time became practical. Iron plows were 
fast driving out the crude wooden plows of the earlier days. 

POLITICAL AND SOCP\L REVOLUTION 

The spirit of progress extended to the political and social ideals of the 

time. The United States as an independent republic had now been in 

existence for fiftv years; national customs were beginning 
Fundamental ^ ^ ,,. ', • , 1 • , 11. 

changes in to crystalhze and growing tendencies to reach the pomt 

national Qf asserting themselves. One of the great experiments 

of the world's history is this big democratic republic of 

the United States of America, so many times larger than any other 

republic in the world's history. Could plain people, left to themselves 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 285 

in a frontier country, govern themselves on such a large scale? What 
kind of laws would they pass? Thoughtful men and women the world 
over, especially in monarchical Europe, where the common people had 
little power, awaited with interest the answer of the Americans to 
these questions. Few new governments have attracted such world- 
wide attention. 

In the political world democracy had faith in its own professions and 
went on making itself more and more democratic. When Thomas 
Jefferson came into the presidency, scarcely one man in New ideas 
six could vote; men were debarred from the suffrage who i^ politics, 
did not own a certain amount of property or pay a certain amount 
of taxes, some even because they were Jews or Roman Catholics or 
disbelievers in the Trinity. Now in Jackson's time the theories of 
Jefferson were being put into practical operation in what was rapidly 
approaching universal manhood suffrage. Shortly before 1830 Massa- 
chusetts and New York abolished property and tax qualifications for 
voting, Maryland gave the suffrage to Jews, and a few radicals were 
beginning the agitation in favor of the extension of the suffrage to 
women. In Rhode Island, where the people were still living under 
the narrow restrictions of the charter of 1663, the movement for a 
wider suffrage increased in intensity until it reached the point of a civil 
uprising in 1842, known as Dorr's Rebellion, which attained its end at 
last, though its leader, Thomas W. Dorr, was imprisoned. Voters 
insisted on taking political power into their own hands more than 
ever before. In some states, where at first the presidential electors 
had been chosen by the members of the state legislature, the people 
by 1829 were beginning to choose the electors by popular vote; and in 
other states, which had allowed various officials to secure their places 
by appointment, the people began to select the officials by popular elec- 
tion. To prevent the rise of an "office-holding aristocracy" the prin- 
ciple of rotation in office was widely put into operation, calling for 
shorter terms of office and a limited reeligibility. In place of the 
former method of nominating party candidates for office by the caucus 
of the party representatives in the membership of the state legislature, 
there was substituted the system of popular nomination of officials 
by a convention of delegates, chosen for this purpose by the rank and 
file of the party. The legislative caucus was secret, liable to corrup- 
tion, and in its practical operation it subjected the executive officials 
whom it named to the undue influence of the legislators who gave 
the nomination. In districts represented in the legislature by the 
members of one party, the voters of the opposite party had no voice 
in the selection of their party candidates. All these difficulties were 



286 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

obviated by the convention of delegates "fresh from the people." 
The new system was in existence in a number of the states when Jackson 
came into office in 1829, and was applied to the nomination of the 
president for the first time by the Anti-Masonic party in 1831. 

Men were beginning to give more attention to the unfortunate, to 
the blind, to the deaf and dumb, and to the insane. Massachusetts 
New ideas ^^^^t the first state asylum for the blind in 1833, and her 
on social example was followed by four other states before the 

ques ions. year 1840 and by almost a score more in the next twenty 
years. The first separate asylum for the deaf and dumb was established 
in Connecticut in 181 7, and several more were founded in the thirties. 
Although there had been two or three asylums for the insane before 
the War of Independence, the first state asylum for this class was 
erected after the second war with Great Britain. There were six such 
asylums by 1830, seven more were founded in the next decade, and by 
i860 in all the states the total was over forty. This noble charity 
was in large part the result of the labors of Miss Dorothea L. Dix, 
who traveled thousands of miles from county to county throughout 
the Union in her work of philanthropy, inspecting and improving con- 
ditions wherever she went. 

The custom of putting people in prison for debt was disappearing. 
Formerly thousands were put into prison every year for this one 
Other social offense. In the city of Boston the number of victims for 
reforms. ^ single year totalled over three thousand, two-thirds of 

whom were convicted for debts of less than $20; and one-eighth of the 
victims were women. In Providence, Rhode Island, a widow was 
imprisoned for a debt of sixty-eight cents. 

A strong tide was setting in against the public execution of criminals, 
and against capital punishment under any circumstances. Lotteries 
to raise money for public buildings and for other purposes were coming 
under condemnation. Socialism of the modern type was not without 
its advocates. Temperapce reform was also beginning to sweep the 
country, though no state prohibition law was placed on the statute 
books till the state of Maine took this step under the leadership of 
Neal Dow in 1851. 

Education for the masses gained ground rapidly after the Feder- 
alists were supplanted by the party of Jefferson and Jackson. The 
New ideas appearance of a distinct laboring class in the cities and 
in education, ^j^g widening of the suffrage tended to direct attention 
to the importance of popular education. Leaders like Henry Barnard 
and Horace Mann organized the first state and national teachers' 
associations, founded the first normal schools, and led in the demand 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 287 

for the expenditure of more public money upon the school system. 
Massachusetts abolished tuition fees in her schools in 1826, and she 
was followed slowly by other states. In 182 1 a public high school 
had appeared in Boston, whence the system spread throughout New 
England and the Middle States. Colleges continued to multiply 
with the growth of the country, and in the decade between 1830 and 
1840 sixty-seven colleges and universities were founded, including 
some of the most prominent western institutions of the present day. 
Business colleges and night schools made their apperance in the manu- 
facturing centers of the East, and here and there Roman Catholic 
schools were springing up. 

The colonial period and the early years of the republic produced 
little literature that was worthy of the name, but by the middle of 
the nineteenth century a brilliant group of American Literary 
writers had appeared, — Washington Irving, James Fenni- activity, 
more Cooper, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe, John Greenleaf 
Whittier, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, William H. Prescott, George 
Bancroft, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wen- 
dell Holmes, James Russell Lowell, and Francis Parkman. The works 
of these men in prose and verse effectively answered Sydney Smith's 
sneer of 1820, "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American 
book?" Noah Webster's epoch-making unabridged dictionary ap- 
peared in 1828, and his famous spelling book, first published in 1783, 
when he was twenty-five years of age, was now issued by hundreds of 
thousands. Modern journalism was taking its rise in the newly estab- 
lished New York Herald of James Gordon Bennett, the New York 
Tribune of Horace Greeley, and the New York Sun. 

The religious life of the United States in the first half of the nine- 
teenth century was different in many respects from that of the colonies. 
Many new sects sprang up and were tolerated. Unitari- j^^^ ^^^^^ 
anism split off from the prevailing Congregational Church in the reii- 
in New England in 1820. The Second Day Adventists s»ous wor 
reached a height of great popularity in 1843, when thousands of 
people in various sections of the country awaited the second coming 
of Christ and the end of the world. Joseph Smith's "The Book of 
Mormon," destined to usher in an entirely new religious cult, appeared 
in 1830. Although Smith himself was murdered by a mob in Illinois, 
Mormonism did not die. Under a new leader, Brigham Young, the 
faithful withdrew from the inhospitable borders of civilization and 
betook themselves across the desert into Mexican territory, in what 
is now the state of Utah, where they founded a prosperous colony. 
Within a few months after their arrival, Mexico ceded the land to the 



288 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



United States and the Mormons found themselves again within the 
jurisdiction of the latter country. When Utah later became a state, 
polygamy, which was formerly a practice of the Mormons, was aban- 
doned as a tenet of the church as being contrary to the laws of the 
United States. 

Stirred by the prevailing spirit of reform, the people of the United 
States were turning instinctively to more and more democracy, to the 
New ideas improvement of the conditions of life around them, and 
on slavery. ^q ^]^g promotion of happiness among all classes. It was 
in response to this spirit of the age as well as to the stimulus given to 
the anti-slavery agitation by the debate over the Missouri Com- 
promise, that the sentiment arose 
to a limited extent in the North- 
ern States, which had freed their 
own slaves, in favor of forcing im- 
mediate and unconditional eman- 
cipation of the blacks upon the 
Southern States, where slavery 
still existed. 

The abolitionists, as those 
were called who took part in this 
radical movement against slav- 
ery, demanded not only the 
freedom of the blacks but the 
granting to them of the social 
and political privileges of the 
whites. They opposed compen- 
sation to the masters for the loss 
of the money invested in the 
slaves, and they took no account 
of the sufferings that would result 
to both whites and blacks if their programme were carried out. 

The new ideas were urged with great ability in a weekly paper, 
the Liberator, started in Boston in 183 1 by William Lloyd Garrison, 
William then twenty-four years old. Garrison had received his 
Lloyd inspiration from a Quaker preacher, Benjamin Lundy, 

who devoted his life to the cause of the blacks, traveling 
thousands of miles in the interests of the cause, addressing hundreds 
of meetings, and editing a newspaper, the Genius of Universal Emanci- 
pation. For a short time Garrison helped Lundy on this paper in Bal- 
timore, but not finding it radical enough he withdrew and set up his 
own paper in Boston. 




William Lloyd Garrison 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 289 

"Our country is the world, our countrymen all mankind," ran the 
motto of the Liberator ; while the first editorial declared, "Assenting 
to the ' self-evident truth ' maintained in the American Declaration of 
Independence, ' that all men are created equal and endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness,' I shall strenuously contend for the im- 
mediate enfranchisement of our slave population. ... I am in earnest 
— I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a 
single inch — and I will be heard." 

These ideas aroused excitement both on account of their radical 
nature and on account of the vehemence with which they were ex- 
pressed. When the Northern States abolished slavery xhe old 
during or soon after the War of the Revolution, as a ideas on 

slHvcrv 

rule they took the step gradually, in most cases remuner- 
ated the masters for their losses, and did not insist on giving to the freed- 
men all the social privileges of the whites. Each state, moreover, took 
the step by itself, with little or no interference from the neighboring 
states. This was abolition of a more moderate type than Garrison's, 
and it was in harmony with these moderate principles that the Ameri- 
can Colonization Society was organized with the avowed purpose of 
taking the freed blacks out of the country into Africa, where the 
demand for social equality with the whites would not arise. 

The majority of people in the North as well as in the South, even of 
the anti-slavery sympathizers, adhered to the more conservative view, 
and disapproved of the idea of immediate emancipation, 
the denial of compensation to the owners, equality of whites the new and 
and blacks, the abandonment of the scheme of coloniza- g}^v^/^^ °° 
tion, and the interference regarding the matter in one 
state by the people of another. The destruction of the prosperity of 
the West Indies, wrought by the abolition of slavery there, added to 
the force of the conservative position. 

Shortly after the Liberator made its appearance a serious negro 
insurrection broke out in southeastern Virginia under the leadership 
of a slave, one Nat Turner, which resulted in the murder 
of nearly one hundred whites before it was put down. The resentment 
South was in alarm. "Let us alone," the Southerners ^Pjjlf^sts 
cried: "keep out your Liberators and the other abolition 
papers from our mails; it is they that are arousing the slaves to revolt. 
Prevent the spread of your abolition ideas; put Garrison in prison, and 
stop the publication of his paper." Rewards, aggregating thousands of 
dollars, were offered by Southerners for the arrest of the abolition editor. 

A large majority of the northern people sympathized with these 



290 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

demands. Garrison was mobbed on the streets of Boston, abolition 
Northern meetings in New York were broken up and a negro 

opposition asylum burned, and in Connecticut a schoolhouse, into 
which negro pupils were admitted, was destroyed. Still the 
abolitionists were not put down. Their local societies were shortly 
numbered by the hundreds; a national organization, the American 
Anti-Slavery Society, was established; and several of their champions, 
notably the venerable ex-President, John Quincy Adams, were elected 
to Congress. The startling growth of the movement is to be credited 
not only to the general spirit of reform sweeping over the United 
States and other countries, but also in particular to the ability and 
persistency of its leader, William Lloyd Garrison. 

The southern radicals made the mistake of dragging slavery into the 
arena of national politics on two different issues, and the results in 
. each case redounded to the advantage of abolitionism, 

slavery peti- The first concerned freedom of speech in Congress itself, 
t^ons in Petitions began to pour in on both houses of Congress 

for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
for the restriction of the interstate trade in slaves, and for kindred 
reforms. In the Senate Calhoun called the petitions "a foul slander" 
on the South; Wise of Virginia in the House of Representatives based 
his opposition to them on the ground that "slavery is interwoven 
with our very political existence." The Southerners insistently de- 
manded that the petitions be laid on the table without discussion, but 
ex-President Adams pointed out that to "gag" the petitions in this 
way would be contrary to the Constitution, which stipulates in the first 
amendment that Congress shall make no law abridging "the right of 
the people to petition the government for redress of grievances." The 
"gag rule" in this case was nevertheless adopted. In the daily pro- 
ceedings in the House of Representatives at the hour for presenting 
petitions, Adams would rise with the words, "I hold in my hand a re- 
quest from the citizens of . . . praying for the abolition of slavery 
in . . ." He would forthwith be declared out of order, only to rise 
again with another, and to be checked in the same way. The cause 
of freedom was strengthened by the attention thus dramatically drawn 
to slavery, and in 1844 the rule was abandoned by the House. 

The presence in the mails of printed matter dealing with abolition 
. was the occasion of a second alignment of forces in Con- 
of abolition gress on the subject of slavery. Postmasters in slave 
matter in states were in the habit of opening private mail and re- 
taining all abolition matter found; the President, through 
the Postmaster General, Amos Kendall, refused to interfere; and the 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 291 

southern leaders felt emboldened to propose a law formally prohibiting 
the use of the mails for abolitionist purposes. Undoubtedly Congress 
possessed the power to pass such a law, just as at the present day it 
exercises the same right when it excludes from the mails all circulars 
and letters in the interests of a known fraud; but public opinion against 
the exclusion of the abolitionist mail was too strong and the measure 
was defeated. 

NEW POLITICAL PARTIES 

The Garrisonian abolitionists, believing with their leader that the 
Constitution of the United States was a "Covenant with Death and 
an Agreement with Hell," denounced that document for The Liberty 
its tolerance of slavery and applauded when Garrison v^^y- 
burned a copy of it in public. They proclaimed the motto, "No union 
with slaveholders," refused to vote or to hold office, or to belong to 
political parties, so that their opposition never took political form. 
In 1840 a group of abolitionists, mainly in the West, formed the 
"Liberty party," which was the first political organization in the 
United States in the interests of emancipation. 

Early in Jackson's second term the opponents of the President 
organized themselves into a new party, on a platform demanding a 
national bank, a protective tariff, and internal improve- -j-j^^ ^ffl^^„^ 
ments at the expense of the nation. They took the name and the 
of Whigs because of the popularity of the British party of 
this name, which had opposed the Tory government of George III at 
the time of the Revolution. Clay, Webster, and the other Whigs 
accepted the doctrine of loose construction of the Constitution and 
stood for the principle of a strong central government. At about 
the same time the followers of President Jackson took the name of 
Democrats. The strife and jealousies of the leaders following the era 
of good feeling had thus sundered the all-triumphant party of the 
Democratic-Republicans into two new organizations. 

In their first national campaign, that of 1836, the Whigs did not 
make a formal nomination for the presidency, but divided their votes 
among four candidates, William Henry Harrison of In- ^j^^ j_ 
diana, the hero of Tippecanoe, Hugh L. White of Ten- dentiai con- 
nessee, Daniel Webster of Massachusetts, and W. P. 
Mangum of North Carolina. At the dictation of President Jackson 
the Democrats nominated Vice President Martin Van Buren, who was 
elected by a vote of 170 in the electoral colleges to 124 for his four 
Whig opponents together. 



292 



NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 



THE PANIC OF 1837 

A few weeks after Van Buren was sworn into office, a terrible 
financial panic broke upon the country, the deadening effects of which 
The causes hung over the nation to the end of Van Buren's term, 
of the panic. Hundreds of banks and commercial houses and thousands 
of business men in every section of the country, finding their debts 
greater than they could pay, went to the wall. The mania for specula- 
tion was the cause of the disaster, 
speculation in banks, in public lands, 
and in city real estate, speculation 
in everything. The risk of specu- 
lation on borrowed money, always 
dangerous, was especially danger- 
ous at this time, because of the 
"wildcat" currency. Two acts of 
the government itself pricked the 
bubble of prosperity. First, the 
distribution of the surplus to the 
states in the summer of 1836 crip- 
pled many of the banks by drawing 
off from them the government de- 
posits. Then, by a single official 
order, the confidence of the govern- 
ment in the "wildcat" notes was 
withdrawn when President Jackson 
issued the specie circular, directing 
the officials of the United States 
to accept only gold and silver in 
payment for public lands. Following this lead, the general public 
withdrew its confidence in the notes, and the discredited money 
ceased to circulate; holders of the notes sent them back to the banks 
in floods with demands for their redemption in coin. In their inability 
to redeem the notes, the banks were forced to close their doors, their 
depositors were ruined, and business was paralyzed. The crisis proved 
again that paper money, in order to be acceptable at its face value, 
must have actual value back of it. 

The cheap and fertile lands of the frontier suddenly became more 
attractive than ever to the thousands of men thrown out of 
work in the commercial and manufacturing centers of the 
East; indeed to many these lands were their only hope, and 
multitudes took up their march to the West in search of 
new homes. Too poor in many cases to purchase land at even so cheap 




Martin Van Buren 



Renewed 
rush to the 
western 
frontier. 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 293 

a rate as $1.25 per acre, the sufferers joined in an old agitation in favor 
of free farms on the public domain for all who would go there and settle. 
They presented their petition to Congress, praying that body to pass 
the legislation necessary for such a use of the public lands. Congress 
complied grudgingly, granting the request at first only to those who 
would go to Florida. For another twenty-five years it clung to its 
refusal to devote all the public lands to free homesteads. 

The old law, which allowed speculators to buy up the public lands 
in any amount without requiring them to cultivate their claims, was 
unwisely left on the statute books; but the preemption Public land 
law was passed, which guaranteed to the settlers, who ^^^^• 
ventured on the public lands before these were legally placed on the 
market, the first chance to take up the lands when they should be 
offered for sale. 

In the West the craze for internal improvements at the expense of 
the states came to an abrupt end. Several states actually went into 
bankruptcy. Ohio became so disgusted with her expendi- 
tures and losses that in her new constitution of 185 1 she for- of state m-^^ 
bade the state "to contract any debt for purposes of internal temal im- 
improvement," and other states followed her example. 

One lesson of the crash was that the United States ought not to 
deposit its money in reckless private banks. A law was passed pro- 
viding for the erection of a treasury building in Washing- ^j^^ , 
ton, with branches in the larger cities, in which to keep treasury 
the money of the nation. This sub-treasury system, the ^y^*®™- 
one great measure of the Van Buren administration, was consistently 
opposed by all friends of the national bank, but it represents the 
policy followed, with some modifications, by the national government 
at the present time, although of late the government has again adopted 
the custom of depositing a part of its money with the banks. This, 
for various reasons, the United States can now do with more safety than 
in Jackson's time. 

An unfortunate situation arose out of the fact that European 
capital was very heavily invested in the United States; in many parts 
of the country the construction of internal improvements Foreign 
had been entirely dependent on capital from abroad. The debts, 
losses of the foreigners after the crash were heavy. Ex-President 
Jackson estimated in 1839 that $200,000,000 were due from states 
and private corporations in the United States to creditors in Europe. 
When some of the bankrupt states repudiated their debts, it was 
largely British capital that suffered. American credit was shattered 
throughout the world, and in the crisis the provisions of the Con- 



294 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

stitution of the United States, far from offering to the foreigners any 
relief, added to their difficulties, for the eleventh amendment to the 
Constitution, in addition to forbidding to citizens of one state the right 
to sue another state, laid the same prohibition on citizens of foreign 
states. Domestic and foreign investors alike could bring no suit 
against a repudiating state of the United States to force it to pay its 
debts, and millions of dollars' worth of these debts were never paid. 

Late in 1837 an exciting event in connection with foreign relations 
served to distract the people's attention from the financial situation. 
The Caro- A rebellion broke out in Canada against Great Britain, 
hue affair. ^j^^ citizens of the United States gave assistance to the 
Canadians. In putting down the uprising the Canadian authorities 
crossed the Niagara River to the United States, where they captured and 
sent over Niagara Falls the ship Caroline, which had been used by the 
rebels against them. One of the crew was killed in the encounter. To 
the United States, which was greatly incensed at the invasion of its 
neutral territory. Great Britain justified her act, just as the United 
States justified Jackson's invasion of Spanish Florida in 1818, on the 
ground that one nation, in self-defense, may invade the territory of 
another to abate a nuisance; but three years later the state of New 
York, in defiance of the protests of the British, proceeded to try for 
murder one McLeod, a British subject arrested in the state, who 
boasted that he had assisted in the destruction of the Caroline. The 
Federal government at Washington requested the state to desist, but 
New York refused. Fortunately the jury brought in a verdict of 
acquittal, and the danger of a war for redress by Great Britain was 
averted. The insistence of a state upon a course in foreign relations, 
contrary to the will of the Federal government, was cause for alarm, for 
although by the Constitution the conduct of foreign affairs was placed 
in the hands of the United States, New York's action showed that a state 
might do great mischief and even bring on a foreign war, which the 
United States would be powerless to avoid. 

The panic of 1837 and the ensuing discontent cast odium on 

the Democratic policies of Jackson and Van Buren as responsible 

„, . for the crisis. The Whigs took up the issue with enthusi- 

The presi- ,11 r ^ 

dentiai cam- asm, elated at the prospect of almost certam success m 

1840° °^ ^^^ next contest at the polls. President Van Buren 

was renominated by his party, and General Harrison was 

the nominee of the Whigs. While the country in desperation was 

struggling with its losses, Van Buren was pictured by the Whig 

orators as living in the White House in aristocratic magnificence, 

eating from plates of gold and drinking choice wines. "Tippecanoe 



JACKSONIAN DEMOCRACY 295 

and Tyler too" was the song of the Whigs as they marched in great 
processions to their outdoor campaign meetings, or ralhes, which now 
for the first time took a prominent place as a feature of American 
political life. The American people had never before participated so 
enthusiastically in a presidential campaign; indeed, under a restricted 
suffrage, they had never before had practical reasons for so doing. 
When nominated, Harrison was living in retirement on a farm at North 
Bend, Indiana, where a part of his house was actually a log cabin. The 
Democrats sneered at his log cabin life, but had the galHng experience 
of seeing their opponents proudly accept the gibe, parade log cabins 
on wheels, with coon skins nailed to the door, and barrels of cider 
standing by, and with such appeals land their candidate in the White 
House. 

The Liberty party, with James G. Birney as its candidate, on a 
platform which declared for the abolition of slavery in all the states, 
polled 7000 votes, mainly in the West. The electoral The result 
vote stood 234 for Harrison to 60 for Van Buren. ^* *^® p^Us. 

GENER.\L REFERENCES 

McINIaster, United States, VI; Sumner, Andrew Jackson; H. von Holst, John 
C. Calhoun; Roosevelt, T. H. Benton; E. M. Shepard, Martin Van Buren; Schurz, 
Henry Clay, I, 311-383, and II, 1-170; Lodge, Daniel Webster. 

SPECLAJL TOPICS 

1. The Spoils System. Bassett, Andrew Jackson, II, 437-457; McMaster, 
United States, V, 519-536; Fish, Civil Service and Patronage. 

2. Daniel Webster as AN Orator. Epochs, \, ie,?,-i6o; Lodge, Daniel Webster, 
II 7-1 28; Harding, Orations, 212-241. 

3. The Independence of Texas. McMaster, United States, VT, 250-270; 
E. D. Adams, British Interests and Activities in Texas; Old South Leaflets, VI, 130; 
Epochs, VI, 136-166; Contemporaries, III, 637-641; Bruce, Expansion, 78-105; 
Sparks, Expansion, 310-323. 

4. William Lloyd Garrison and the Abolitionists. W. P. and F. J. Gar- 
rison, William Lloyd Garrison; McMaster, United States, VI, 271-298 ; Old South 
Leaflets, IV, 78, 79, and 81; Epochs, VI, 50-76, and 167-170; H. A. Herbert, 
Abolition Crusade and -its Consequences; Contemporaries, HI, 595-614; Harding, 
Orations, 258-266. 

5. Actual Conditions of Slavery. Hart, Slavery and Abolition; Contemporaries, 
HI, 574-636; Rhodes, United States, I, 303-380; F. L. Olmsted, Cotton Kingdom, 
Seaboard Slave States, and Back Country; Harding, Orations, 247-257. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERLAL 

A. Barr, Remember the Alamo; K. Munroe, With Crockett and Bowie; L. Larcom, 
A New England Girlhood; E. Eggleston, Hoosier Schoolmaster, and Circuit Rider; 
Stowe, Drcd. 



296 NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

How did the democracy of Andrew Jackson differ from that of Thomas Jeflerson? 
State in your own words Webster's argument against states' rights. Compare Jack- 
son's use of the soldiers of the regular army in the nullification crisis with the use of 
the militia by Washington and Madison. What were the advantages and disadvantages 
of the overthrow of the second bank of the United States? In what respects was the 
attitude of capital toward labor in Jackson's time paternal? Account for this pater- 
nalism. How do you account for the sudden appearance and persistence of radical 
abolitionism in Jackson's time? Do you condemn the aboUtionists ? \^'hy, or why 
not? How do you account for the sudden appearance and strength of the spoils sys- 
tem in national politics? What connection can you point out between the extension 
of the suffrage and the progress of popular education? How can Jackson be held 
responsible for the panic of 1837? What were the leading issues in current politics 
before the people in the presidential campaign of 1832, 1836, and 1840? 



PART VI 

AN ERA OF TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND 
CONTINUED SECTIONAL STRIFE, 1841-1865 

CHAPTER XX 

THE MEXICAN ANNEXATIONS AND OTHER PHASES OF 

EXPANSION 

DISSENSIONS IN THE WHIG PARTY 

The Whig triumph in the election of General Harrison was short- 
lived. One month after his inauguration the new President died, and 
Vice President Tyler succeeded to the office of President. The succes- 
Tyler had been chosen as Harrison's running mate, not pr^gid^enr^ 
as an out-and-out Whig, but as a Democrat who was Tyler to 
opposed to Jackson and who might attract the vote of quan-eUn the 
the dissatisfied element of his party. With a strong Whig party, 
majority in both houses of Congress and with a President of their 
choice in the White House, the Whigs confidently passed a bill rees- 
tablishing the old national bank, which Jackson had swept out of 
existence; but in one of the most faithless acts in American politics 
President Tyler wrote "veto" upon the bill. Hoping still to meet 
the President's approval, Congress passed the act in an amended form, 
and again "veto" was written upon it. 

The incensed Whigs "read Tyler out of the party" and sought his 
undoing at every turn. Every member of the cabinet but one resigned. 
The Democrats, though highly pleased at the turn of ^j^^ ^elpiess- 
aiTairs, could not receive the President into their party, ness of Presi- 
and so "poor Tyler" struggled on to the end of his term ^" ^ ^^' 
with no party behind him, unable to form a party of his own and power- 
less to bring about any important legislation. The Whigs were 
partially satisfied when the President signed their bill destroying the 
independent sub-treasury system set up in the previous administration. 

Tyler and the Whigs also quarreled over the tariff. In accordance 
with the Compromise Tariff Act of 1833, the rates of tariff The tariff of 
were to be gradually lowered till 1842, when there would ^^*^- 
be a uniform rate of twenty per cent. The Whigs now renounced 
this agreement and tried to force Tyler to sign a bill bringing back 

297 



298 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

high rates. After two vetoes the President signed the act of 1842, by 
which the rates were materially increased. 

The one Whig left in Tyler's cabinet after his alienation of the party 
was the Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, who was engaged in ne- 
The Webster- gotiating with Lord Ashburton an important treaty with 
Ashburton Great Britain, which was later ratified by the Senate of the 
treaty. United States. In this treaty three important points were 

settled. First, the present boundary line between Maine and the Do- 
minion of Canada and the present northern line extending west from 
the Connecticut River to the St. Lawrence and from Lake Huron to 
the Lake of the Woods were agreed upon. Second, the two nations 
bound themselves to cooperate in putting down the foreign slave trade 
on the coast of Africa. Third, agreements were made for the mutual 
giving up of fugitives from justice in certain cases. 

THE ANNEXATION OF TEX.\S AND THE OCCUPATION OF OREGON 

President Jackson, when his fellovN^-Americans in northern Mexico 
seized the province of Texas and set it up as an independent state. 
Growth of officially recognized the independence of Texas, but 
sentiment in there he stopped, and to the insistent demands of many 
annexation that the new state be annexed to the United States he 
of Texas. gave a firm refusal. It was not because he was opposed 

to the annexation of territory; but Texan compHcations with Mexico 
were too recent to admit of uniting the new republic with the United 
States without danger of trouble with Mexico, which refused to give 
up her claims. Van Buren took the same position, but President 
Tyler, under the political necessity of finding some means of winning 
popular support in his struggle with the Whigs, readily grasped at the 
plan of making a state of the Union out of Texas. 

Tyler's first Secretary of State, Daniel Webster, was at the time a 
strong anti-slavery man who had put himself on record in public as 
The position opposed to the annexation of Texas, but as soon as the 
of Tyler's negotiations with Great Britain over the Ashburton 
retaries^of treaty were concluded, Webster retired from his post 
State. 2Lnd was succeeded by Upshur. The new Secretary gave 

himself with ardor to the promotion of the cause of annexation, 
but he was killed on board a man-of-war by the explosion of a gun, 
when he had been in office hardly a year. His successor was slavery's 
great champion, John C. Calhoun. Both Upshur and Calhoun, to 
further annexation, skillfully used the fact of heavy British invest- 
ments in Texas, charging that Great Britain through these means was 
intriguing to bring about the abolition of slavery there and possibly 
the formation of a British protectorate. 



]MEXICAN ANNEX.\TIONS AND PHASES OF EXPANSION 299 

Calhoun secured the consent of the Texans to a treaty of annexa- 
tion to the United States, under the promise that the United States 
would give to them the protection of its army and navy in the interval 
between the negotiation and the ratification of the treaty. 

In his message transmitting the treaty to the Senate President 
Tyler summed up his views on Texas in the following words: "There 
exists no civilized government on earth, having a volun- President 
tary tender made it of a domain so rich and fertile, so Tyler's views, 
replete with all that can add to national greatness and wealth, and 
so necessary to its peace and safety, that would reject the offer." 

William Ellery Channing, a New England divine, well expressed the 
anti-slavery point of view in regard to Texas. "By this act slavery 
will be opened over regions to which it is now impossible 
to set limits. . . . We know that the tropical regions slavery posi- 
have been found most propitious to this pestilence; nor ^on on 
can we promise that its expulsion from them for a season 
forbids its return. ... By this act slavery will be perpetuated in 
the old states as well as spread over new. It is well known that the soil 
of some of the old states has become exhausted by slave cultivation. 
Their neighborhood to communities which are flourishing under free 
labor, forces on them perpetual arguments for adopting this better 
system. They now adhere to slavery, not on account of the wealth 
which it extracts from the soil, but because it furnishes men and women 
to be sold in newly settled and more southern districts. It is by slave 
breeding and slave selling that these states subsist. Take away from 
them a foreign market, and slavery would die. Of consequence, by 
opening a new market, it is prolonged and invigorated. . . . As I have 
before intimated, and it cannot be too often repeated, we shall not only 
quicken the domestic slave trade; we shall give a new impulse to the for- 
eign. ... I ask, whether, as a people, we can stand forth in the sight 
of God, in the sight of the nations, and adopt this atrocious policy?" 

To the surprise of all, the Senate of the United States, usually 
friendly to projects of annexation, rejected the treaty by a decisive 
vote, probably because even the southern Democrats, Re'ectl n f 
who naturally desired the annexation, were not willing the annexa- 
to bolster up the waning political fortunes of President ^°^ treaty. 
Tyler by indorsing his pet measure. The action was a heavy blow 
to the hopes of the South, for the rivalry between the North and 
the South for new free states on the one hand and for new slave states 
on the other, still continued. Free Michigan had been admitted to 
offset the slave state of Arkansas, and free Iowa as an offset to 
Florida. Out of Texas several slave states might be carved. 



300 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

While the question of Texas was agitating the country anxious 
eyes were turned to the northwestern country of Oregon. The United 

States based its claim to this region, first, on the discovery 
of the United of the Columbia River by Captain Gray in 1792; second. 
States to Qj^ ^}^Q exploration of the country by Lewis and Clark, 

1804-1806; third, on the existence of the fur trading 
post established on the Columbia River at Astoria by John Jacob 




Astoria in 1813 
From Franchere's Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America. 



Astor in 181 1; fourth, on the treaty with Spain in 1819, which trans- 
ferred to the United States all possible Spanish claims to the region; 
and fifth, on actual possession. 

At the same time the British were advancing claims to Oregon, 
based on the exploration of the Pacific coast in these parts by Sir 
The British Francis Drake in 1579 and by Captain Cook in 1778, 
on the voyage of Vancouver along the same coasts in 
1792, on the overland voyage of Sir Alexander Mackenzie 
through Canada to the Pacific, which he reached in 1793, and on the 
slight possession of the country by the outposts of the Hudson Bay 
Company. In 1818 the United States and Great Britain agreed to a 
joint occupation of Oregon for ten years, which was extended indefinitely 
in 1827, with the right reserved to either party to terminate the agree- 
ment at a year's notice. 



claims to 
Oregon 



IMEXICAN ANNEX.A.TIONS AND PHASES OF EXPANSION 301 






During the progressive era of Jackson missionaries from the Eastern 
States reached the banks of the Columbia to teach Christianity to the 
native Indian tribes, and following slowly in their track overland 
came bands of settlers whom the hard times after the immigration 
panic of 1837 were sending all over the West in search of ° regon. 
homes. A handful went to Oregon from the Atlantic states in 1842, 
and over one thousand in 
1843. One of the leaders 
in Oregon in these early 
days was Dr. Marcus 
Whitman, a missionary 
of the American Board of 
Commissioners for For- 
eign Missions, who ar- 
rived there in 1836. He 
labored with singular de- 
votion for the welfare of 
the natives ; in 1 842 , in the 
interests of his mission he 
made a famous journey, 
single-handed, across the 
continent to Washington 
and Boston; and, return- 
ing, he accompanied the 
immigrants of 1843 across 
the plains and mountains 
to their haven in Walla Walla. The safe arrival in the coveted 
territory of such a large band strengthened the claim of the United 
States that the region was theirs by right of possession, which in 
the sequel was to prove "nine points of the law." 

While the Senate of the United States was wrestling over the Texas 
treaty and while Oregon was filling up with settlers, the presidential 
campaign of 1844 came on. The Democrats in their con- 
vention passed over ex-President Van Buren after a spirited dentiai cam- 
contest and selected as their candidate Tames K. Polk of P^'.sp °^ 
Tennessee, while the Whigs, without even considering 
President Tyler, almost as a matter of course named their leader, 
Henry Clay. As a standard-bearer Polk was the first "dark horse" 
in national politics, that is, the first candidate nominated without 
previous general discussion of his name. Clay, on the other hand, 
a leader in the political life of the nation for over thirty years, 
had already been a candidate for the presidency in two exciting con- 




The Oregon Coitntry 



302 



TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



tests. "Who is James K. Polk?" rose the campaign shout of the 
Whigs; "We will return James K. Polk to the convention that 
discovered him." 




The Trails to Oregon and Caufornia 



Natural as it was to compare the two candidates, a campaign of 

personalities was impossible in face of the more important question of 

territorial expansion. Polk stood on a platform that 

expansion in called for "the reannexation of Texas and the reoccu- 

*^^ . nation of Oregon" • — Texas for the South and Oregon for 

campaign. ^ '^ . . , 

the North. This was a bold call to expansion, a remmder 

that Texas had been claimed once before by the United States as a 

part of Louisiana but had been relinquished in the treaty with Spain 

in 1819, and a suggestion that Oregon belonged to the United States 

by right of settlement and occupation. 

The unexpected rejection by the national Senate of President Tyler's 

Texas treaty within one week after the adjournment of the Democratic 

convention that called for the annexation of Texas, served 

to draw particular attention to this question as the 

leading issue. Clay started out as an opponent of annexation, and 

then laid himself open to the charge of being a political trimmer by a 



Texas. 



MEXICAN ANNEXATIONS AND PHASES OF EXPANSION 303 

sudden shifting of position in the midst of the campaign. In an evil 
moment he penned the following words, which were seized upon by 
the Democrats as ammunition against him. "I have, however, no 
hesitation in saying that, far from having any personal objection to the 
annexation of Texas, I should be glad to see it, without dishonor, 
without war, with the common consent of the Union, and upon just 
and fair terms. I do not think that the subject of slavery ought to 
affect the question one way or the other." 

On election day Polk received a popular vote of 1,337,000 to 
1,299,000 for Clay, and 62,000 for Birney, the candidate of the Liberty 
party; the electoral vote stood 170 for Polk to 105 for _,. , 

Clay. It was generally agreed that the "I should be 
glad to see it" letter, which he thought would help him in the pro- 
slavery South, lost Clay enough anti-slavery support in the North to 
cost him the 41 electoral votes of the close states of New York and 
Michigan; but it can hardly be said that this determined the election, 
for the same letter also doubtless won for Clay the 13 votes of Ten- 
nessee, which, even with New York and Michigan behind him, he 
could not have spared. 

Although he himself had not been the standard-bearer to lead the 
Democrats to victory in the contest, President Tyler in- ^j^^ annexa- 
terpreted the result of the election as a vote of confidence tion of Texas 
in his Texas policy, and he proceeded to work for annexa- *^°°^^ 
tion with fresh zeal in the closing months of his administration.. 
The Senate's defeat of his treaty having revealed the difficulties in the 
way of securing a two-thirds vote in that body in favor of annexation, 
the President proceeded on a new tack. With his approval, the 
friends of annexation, by a simple majority vote in each house of 
Congress, passed a joint resolution, proposing to Texas annexation 
to the United States. This resolution President Tyler signed March 
I, 1845, three days before leaving office, and he had the personal satis- 
faction, while still President, of dispatching the formal offer to the 
Texans. Texas accepted the invitation and was admitted into the 
Union as a state in December, 1845, after Polk became President. 

This fourth national expansion almost surely contained the germs 
of future strife, for Mexico had not only not yet recognized the inde- 
pendence of Texas, but in 1843 had declared unequivocally Dangers 
that the passage of any act of annexation by the Congress connected 
of the United States would be considered equivalent to a nexation of 
Declaration of War. When the resolution of annexation Texas. 
was passed, Mexico immediately broke off diplomatic relations with 
the United States. 



304 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

THE MEXICAN WAR AND THE ANNEXATION OF CALIFORNIA 
AND NEW MEXICO 

President Polk frankly stated to a friend at the outset of his adminis- 
tration that he wished to signalize his administration by the accomplish- 
Th licies n^e^it of four great measures, the acquisition of California, 
of President the settlement of the dispute with Great Britain over Ore- 
^°^' gon, the enactment of an Independent Treasury Act, 

and the readjustment of the tariff. Each of these four measures he 
accomplished. 

During the summer of his first year in office Polk sent John Slidell 
of Louisiana on a secret mission to Mexico to resume diplomatic 
relations with that country if possible. Claims for 
mission to indemnity aggregating millions of dollars were held by 
acquire citizens of the United States against the Mexican 

government, and the President hoped that he might 
persuade the impoverished state to pay these in land. Slidell was 
authorized, if Mexico would give up California, to assume the claims 
and pay Mexico millions to boot. He was also to attempt the 
peaceable settlement of the southern boundary of Texas. Diplomacy 
failed to achieve its object, and Slidell was forced to leave Mexico. 
"Be assured," wrote the ambassador to his government at home, 
''that nothing is to be done with these people until they shall have 
been chastised." Obedient to the hint, the President proceeded to 
"chastise" Mexico for not handing over to the United States a 
second rich province. 

There was uncertainty as to the precise limits of the new state 
of Texas. Mexico claimed the Nueces River as the boundary line, but 
War declared the United States decided to adopt the claim of Texas 
on Mexico. j^^t her Southern and western boundary was the Rio 
Grande, a line much farther to the west and south than the southern 
and western limits of the former Mexican state of Texas. Into the 
disputed area between the two rivers President Polk, as the com- 
mander-in-chief of the armies of the United States, without notifying 
Congress of his intentions, ordered General Taylor to move with his 
troops and stand guard. The exasperated Mexicans crossed the Rio 
Grande and gave fight, and the President sent a message to Congress 
declaring: "Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, 
has invaded our territory and shed American blood upon Ameri- 
can soil. She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced, and 
that the two nations are now at war. As war exists, and, notwith- 
standing all our efforts to avoid it, exists by the act of Mexico 



MEXICAN ANNEXATIONS AND PHASES OF EXPANSION 305 

herself, we are called upon by every consideration of duty and 
patriotism to vindicate with decision the honor, the rights, and the 
interests of our country." 

£3 



4. 




Mission San Francisco de la Esp.ada, San Antonio, Texas 



The ensuing war was unpopular with many of the citizens of the 
United States, who felt that an unfair advantage was being taken of a 
weak neighbor. 

Two farcical battles were fought in May, 1846, in the disputed 
strip on the northern banks of the Rio Grande, at Palo Alto and 
Resaca de la Palma, in which the Mexicans were defeated, -j-j^g achieve- 
Taylor then crossed the river, won two more victories mentsofGen- 
at Monterey and Buena Vista, and returned to the United ^^ ^^ °^' 
States. So far the struggle was mere border warfare, which might 



3o6 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



have continued indefinitely without decisive results. It was deter- 
mined to strike a blow at the heart of Mexico. 

General Winfield Scott, who had won glory as a young soldier at 
the battles of Chippewa 
and Lundy's Lane in the 
General second war 

Scott. with Great 

Britain and was now 
appointed commander of 
the armies of the United 
States against Mexico, 
appeared on the sea be- 
fore Vera Cruz on the 
Gulf of Mexico, and land- 
ing, began a series of vic- 
tories over a stretch of 
two hundred miles inland 
to Mexico City, the capi- 
tal of Mexico. He took 
the mountain pass of 
Cerro Gordo, the citadel 
of Cherubusco, the castle 
of Chapultepec, and fi- 
nally the capital city it- 
self. The fall of their 
capital, September 1847, 
but a little more than a 
year after the war 
opened, put an end to the 
active resistance of the 
Mexicans and brought 
the war to a close. 

In the meantime a 

third expedition under 

General Kearney, with 

Ti,^ «.^,„^» the assist- 
The occupa- 
tion of anceof Com- 

California. j ^ _ ^ 

m o d o r e 




SCALE OF MILES 



100 



The Mexican War 



Stockton of the navy 
and General Fremont, 
had taken California with practically no resistance. 

By the treaty of peace, signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo, February, 



MEXICAN ANNEXATIONS AND PHASES OF EXPANSION 307 

1848, the United States paid to Mexico $15,000,000 and in return 
received the undisputed title not only to the disputed strip of land 

between the 




The treaty 
of Guada- 
lupe 
Hidalgo. 



Rio Grande 
and the Nueces 
but also to Cal- 
ifornia, which Polk had 
openly coveted, and to the 
Mexican territory lying be- 
tween California on the west 
and Texas on the east, 
which, with a small area 
secured later, known as the 
Gadsden Purchase, em- 
braces the present states 
of New Mexico, Arizona, 
Nevada, Utah, and the 
western part of Colorado. 
Polk was urged to seize the 
whole of Mexico, but 
through fear of the judg- 
ment of the people against 
his party at the next presi- 
dential election he decided 
not to entertain the thought 
of further aggrandizement. 
Mexico was discharged from 
all claims of American citi- 
zens, while the United 
States agreed to pay the 
same to an amount not ex- 
ceeding $3, 2 50,000. The cost 
of the war itself in money 
was from $75,000,000 to 
$100,000,000 and in human 
life 10,000 men. This, the 
nation's sixth annexation of 
foreign territory, for the 
fifth, as we shall see, had 

been peaceably effected during the progress of hostilities with Mexico, 

was the most costly annexation up to that time. 

Five years later, in 1853, the United States purchased from Mexico 



The 

Missions and Chapels 

of 

CALIFORNIA 

Si Missions l^Clutpela 



3o8 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

for $10,000,000 the additional strip of 45,000 square miles, in what is 
The Gadsden now the southern part of Arizona and New Mexico, called 
Purchase. ^]^q Gadsden Purchase, from the name of the commissioner 
who carried on the negotiations. 

Just as President Jefferson's war with the African pirates had proved 
a training school for the navy and was a preparation for the second 
The Mexican ^^^ ^^^^ Great Britain, this war on the Mexicans afforded 
War a train- training for many a young soldier who was to participate in 
ingsc 00. ^j^g coming Civil War, then not far distant. Among the 
future generals who now saw their first service were Ulysses S. Grant, 
Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson, and William T. Sher- 
man. Just as the War of 181 2 and the Indian wars on the frontier called 
forth two men into military prominence and later to the presidency, 
so two generals of the Mexican War, Taylor and Pierce, reached the 
same goal, and another of its leaders, General Winfield Scott, was 
advanced on the same road as far as the presidential nomination. 

The utility of the military academy at West Point on the Hudson 

The Naval having been demonstrated, a similar school for the navy 

Academy at was Set up at Annapolis, Maryland, in 1845, not, how- 

nnapo is. gyer, in time to produce naval leaders in the war 

against Mexico; indeed, naval leaders were little needed in that war. 

THE ANNEXATION OF OREGON 

In June, 1846, one month after the beginning of the war with Mexico, 

the United States accomplished her fifth national expansion in the 

annexation of Oregon by a compromise treaty with Great 

promise with Britain, whose claims to the country could not be disre- 

Great Britain nrarded. The northern line of the Oregon country, sepa- 
over Oregon. " . . . " ./ 7 r- 

rating it from the Russian territory of Alaska, had been 

fixed at 54° 40' north latitude by the treaty with Russia in 1824, while 
the southern line, bordering on the Spanish — later Mexican — terri- 
tory of California, was fixed at 42° by the treaty with Spain in 1819. 
The eastern line was the Rocky Mountains. It was difficult to agree 
upon a division with the British. The United States at first demanded 
the whole of the Oregon country, and failing this, threatened war. 
"Fifty-four forty or fight" was the slogan of the Democratic national 
convention which had nominated Polk in 1844; but to avert a war 
with Great Britain when his country already had one enemy in arms 
against it on the south. President Polk decided on concessions. The 
United States gave up to the British that part of Oregon north of the 
parallel of 49°, the present northern boundary of the United States, and 
for its share took the southern part between the parallels of 49° and 42°. 



MEXICAN ANNEXATIONS AND PHASES OF EXPANSION 309 

By the acquisition of Oregon and California an unbroken coast line 
was secured for over one thousand miles along the Pacific. It was 
charged at the time that the southern statesmen of Polk's administra- 
tion played "fast and loose" with the North over Oregon, ^j^^ ^^^_ 
in that, while they insisted on a war to get what they promise a 
wanted from Mexico, they readily consented to resign to '^^ "^ °°®' 
Great Britain, without a blow, territory that seemed unfit for slavery. 
Yet that the Oregon question was preeminently one for compromise 
has been generally recognized, for there was justice in both the British 
and the American claims. 

The acquisition of Texas in 1845 with 390,000 square miles, of Ore- 
gon in 1846 with 290,000 square miles, and of the Mexican cession in 
1848 with 520,000 square miles, in three years brought to Extensive 
the United States 1,200,000 square miles of new territory, territorial 
This was an area larger than either the original area of ^^i"'^' ^°^^- 
i783,v/hich embraced 850,000 square miles, or the Louisiana Purchase of 
1803, which amounted to 875,000 square miles. Florida had added only 
65,000 square miles. The total area of the United States in 1848 after 
the Mexican treaty was 2,970,000 square miles; and when the Gadsden 
Purchase was added to the area taken from Mexico, the outlines of 
the present continuous territory of the United States were complete. 

THE NEW PROBLEMS OF THE PACIFIC 

In January, 1848, a week or so before the treaty of peace with the 
Mexicans, but without the knowledge either of Mexico or of the United 
States, gold was discovered by James W. Marshall at jj^^ ^^^cov- 
Sutter's Mill in California, forty miles from the present ery of gold in 
city of Sacramento. The news spread like wildfire. orma. 

Men rushed to the diggings from every quarter of the civilized world, 
but chiefly from the eastern part of the United States. So great was the 
excitement that from practically every town and village of the United 
States gold-seekers set out for California. One hundred thousand 
people undertook the expedition in 1849, some traveling in sailing 
vessels around Cape Horn, some struggling across the narrow Isthmus 
of Panama to ships on the Pacific, but the great majority of them mak- 
ing their way by wagon trains across the plains of the United States. 
These formed an army. "In the day their trains filled up the road for 
miles, and at night their campfires glittered in every direction about 
the places blessed by grass and water." To thousands the path over 
the plains proved the path of death, traced by the decaying carcasses 
of dead animals, by the boxes, barrels, and household goods thrown 
away to lighten the load, and by the hastily constructed graves. 



3IO TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

In twelve years over $500,000,000 worth of gold was obtained from 
the mines, and the Httle mission village of San Francisco grew to be 
a city of 56,000 people. 




Sutter's Mill 



The problem of how to improve communication with the new 
possessions pressed for immediate solution. A canal between the 
Atlantic and Pacific oceans had been the dream of cen- 
for an ocean- turies, from the days of Balboa and Cortes and Champlain. 
to-ocean 'pj^g Panama Congress of 1826 had considered it, De Witt 

Clinton, promoter of the Erie Canal, was interested in it, 
and Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson had ordered 
surveys of suitable routes. 

In 1846, after the United States had secured its title to the southern 
part of the Oregon country, but before the title to California had been 
acquired, a treaty was concluded with New Granada 
(now Colombia) in the northwestern corner of South 
America, which gave to the United States "the right of 
way or transit across the Isthmus of Panama upon any 
modes of communication that now exist or that may be 
hereafter constructed." The "perfect neutrality" of the isthmus 
and " the rights of sovereignty and property which New Granada has 
and possesses over the said territory" were positively guaranteed by the 
United States. Private capital from the United States then set to 



The right 
of way 
across 
Panama. 
The Panama 
Railroad. 



MEXICAN ANNEXATIONS AND PHASES OF EXPANSION 311 

work to build a railroad across the isthmus. In the fever-stricken 
swamps of the region the death rate in the construction of the road was 
terrific; but seven years of work sufficed to bring it to completion at a 
cost of $8,000,000, and it was at once a huge success in lightening 
the hardships of the Atlantic-Pacific route to California. 




Old Prairie Schooner and Stage Coach of First Days in the West 
Photograph taken of two ancient relics of early American pioneer life. Origi- 
nals are at Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, California, which is maintained as a 
museum by the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West. The stage 
coach is riddled with bullets through its encounters with early outlaws and pio- 
neer highwaymen. 

In almost every step in the unfolding of the new policy of terri- 
torial expansion the United States'was confronted by the active rivalry 
of Great Britain. This was not true, to be sure, in the ^j^^ ^^j^ ^ ^_ 
negotiation of the treaty with New Granada a,nd in the con- Buiwer 
struction of the Panama Railroad; but, on the other hand, *''^^*y- 
the story of the annexation of Texas, Oregon, and California constantly 
reveals the attempts of the British to block the government at Wash- 
ington in its efforts for national expansion. They were foiled, however, 
in this, and hearing that the United States had successfully concluded 
the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo with the Mexicans, a small British 
fleet, six days after the signing of that treaty, set out from Vera Cruz, 
on the Gulf of Mexico, to the coast of Nicaragua in Central America, 
at the mouth of the San Juan River, where it was believed that the 
United States was about to locate the Atlantic terminus of a Nica- 
raguan Canal to the Pacific. With the thousand and more miles of new 
coast line on the Pacific in her possession, the United States viewed with 



312 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

great disfavor the obstructive tactics of her rival. A delicate crisis was 
at hand, which, if not handled wisely, might lead to war. The first 
move of the Washington authorities was the negotiation of two sepa- 
rate treaties with Nicaragua granting to the United States certain 
rights in the construction of a canal through that country. Armed 
with the two treaties, the United States confronted Great Britain at 
Nicaragua and demanded that she come to terms, else the United 
States would ratify one of the Nicaraguan treaties and proceed alone. 
The threat was successful and the Clayton-Bulwer treaty with Great 
Britain of the year 1850 was the result. It was agreed in this treaty, 
though with no mention of the principles of the Monroe Doctrine 
itself, first, that Great Britain on her part would so far recognize the 
principles of that Doctrine as to promise that she would never attempt 
to plant a colony in Central America; and second, that the United 
States, on her part, would temporarily waive the Doctrine so far as 
to associate Great Britain with herself in joint control of any canal 
that should be built in Nicaragua. The two nations were together to 
protect the projected waterway, exercise supervision over its tolls, and 
secure it from hostile attack. The agreement to a joint partnership 
covered only a canal in Nicaragua. For a canal or a railroad, either 
at Panama or Tehuantepec, if one should be constructed, the United 
States agreed with the British that sometime in the future the two 
powers would cover that subject in a second treaty and that such a 
canal or railroad should be " open to the citizens and subjects of the 
United States and Great Britain on equal terms." 

It was a highly hazardous task to undertake to enforce the Monroe 
Doctrine in one instance by allowing it to be broken in another. Desir- 
able as it was to force Great Britain to promise never to 
the Clayton- occupy, fortify, or colonize "Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the 
Buiwer Mosquito coast, or any part of Central America " and never 

again to assume or exercise "dominion over the same," 
the promise to take the rival nation into partnership in the matter of a 
Nicaraguan Canal, was without doubt contrary to the spirit of Presi- 
dent Monroe's great principle. The Clayton-Bulwer treaty has gen- 
erally been regarded as a grave mistake on the part of the United 
States, which she has tried at various times since to rectify. It was 
formally abrogated in 1901. 

For the protection of any forthcoming canal, terminating on the 

Efforts to Guli of Mexico, the possession of Cuba was most desirable. 

acquire The nation's diplomacy regarding Cuba before the time of 

" *■ President Polk had taken the form of an effort to prevent 

Great Britain or France from acquiring the island. Under the new 



MEXICAN ANNEXATIONS AND PHASES OF EXPANSION 313 

wave of expansion attending and following the Mexican War, the 
demand arose that the United States herself acquire "the pearl of 
the Antilles." In 1849 President Polk offered one hundred million 
dollars to Spain for the island, but the offer was scornfully rejected. 
Spain avowed that rather than part with the colony to the United 
States, she would "prefer seeing it sunk into the ocean." Active 
efforts to acquire Cuba continued for another decade. 

As a further means of improving transportation facilities to Cali- 
fornia and Oregon, the project of a railroad across the plains and 
mountains of the United States to the Pacific rapidly took ^ railroad 
shape. It was hoped that such a road would enable gold- to the 
seekers to make the journey thither more easily, build up ^" ^' 
trade between the eastern cities and the Pacific, give the United 
States a hold on the trade of China and other Asiatic countries, and 
enable the government more easily to send protecting armies westward. 
It required over fifteen years of discussion to induce Congress to com- 
mit itself to the step, for with the Southern States demanding a South- 
ern Pacific Railroad and the Northern States a Northern Pacific 
Railroad, it proved difficult to agree on a route. 

Looking westward over the Pacific from California and Oregon, 
American statesmen were planning for the further extension of the 
Oriental trade, which had been started so auspiciously closer trade 
by the Empress of China in the days of the Confedera- relations 
tion and still flourished, despite a temporary setback ^'* ^' 

during the second war with Great Britain. Within a year and a 
half after the declaration of peace in 181 5, forty-two "India ships" 
cleared from American ports for Asia, and in 1821 forty-eight were on 
the seas from Salem, Massachusetts, alone. The country's oldtime 
supremacy in the commerce of the Atlantic was by this time on the 
decline, but in the development of the Chinese trade of the Pacific, 
after forty years of effort, American ships were in the ascendency 
over their British, Dutch, and Portuguese rivals. The chief prod- 
ucts carried to Canton were opium, ginseng, quicksilver, lead, iron, 
copper, furs, and broadcloths; and the chief products imported from 
thence were tea, silk, camphor, rhubarb, sugar, and chinaware. 

The article of the outside world most desired by the Chinese was 
opium; but sensible of the effects of this terrible drug on the human 
system, the government of China finally put a ban on the ^j^^ opening 
opium trade, confiscated all the opium stored within her up of 
territory, and forbade its further importation. From a 
financial point of view those to suffer most from the restriction 
were British subjects, who had been in the habit of exporting opium 



314 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

from India to China in large quantities. Although the war which 
Great Britain waged, 1840-1842, to continue the unholy trade with 
China was a blot on British history, beneficial commercial results in 
other respects followed both to China and to the rest of the world. In 
the treaty of peace terminating- the war China so far broke down her 
walls of exclusion as to open up five of her ports to British trade. "The 
next year the United States sent a large squadron to China and secured 
the same concessions. China as a whole, however, remained a closed 
nation till 1858, when by treaties with Russia, Great Britain, France, 
and the United States, she threw open a large number of her ports 
to the trade of the citizens of these countries and gave them the right 
of access to her government, the right to reside in Peking, to enjoy re- 
ligious toleration and to send diplomatic representatives to China, 
and certain other privileges. 

At the same time western civilization was knocking at the doors 
of isolated Japan. After a special messenger to the Japanese Emperor 

^^ . had been repulsed in 1846, all the world looked on with 

The opening ,^ ^ \ r ^ /-^ -n, ^ ^ r 

up of interest when Commodore Matthew C. Perry, brother 01 

Japan. Commodore Oliver H. Perry, the hero of Lake Erie, 

sailed in 1852 to Japan at the head of a squadron of eleven vessels. 
The mission was one of peaceful persuasion and diplomacy, not one of 
war. Perry was a diplomat of rare powers, firm, wise, dignified, and 
patient, and he succeeded in securing from the Japanese in 1854 a treaty 
which threw open two of her ports to trade with the United States. 
Within a year similar treaties were secured from Japan by Great Britain, 
Russia, Holland, and other nations. Among the gifts of the Americans 
to the Japanese, on the occasion of the signing of the memorable Perry 
treaty, were rifles, muskets, swords, a telescope, two telegraphic instru- 
ments, a locomotive with tender, a passenger coach, railroad rails, four 
volumes of Audubon's "Birds of America," eight baskets of potatoes, 
and numerous agricultural implements. The locomotive and tele- 
graphic instruments were set up on the shore and operated by the Ameri- 
cans, to the great amazement of the Japanese. The Japanese presented 
the visitors with rice, three hundred chickens, paper boxes, pieces of 
pongee, crepe, and silk, twenty umbrellas, and thirteen dolls. In 1858 
Japan was further opened up to foreign trade by new treaties, first with 
the United States, and then with Great Britain, France, and Russia. 
The Sandwich, or Hawaiian Islands, discovered by the Englishman, 
Captain Cook, in 1778, assumed importance as a halfway 
Sron^onhe Station in the Pacific as soon as American ships began their 
independence |^j-ips to China and Japan. Captain Gray in the Colum- 
of Hawaii. ^^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^^^ ^^^j^ merchantmen from the Oregon 



MEXICAN ANNEXATIONS AND PHASES OF EXPANSION 315 

country, and, after the War of 181 2, hundreds of American whalers in 
the North Pacific, habitually stopped there. Later in the nineteenth 
century, on more than one occasion, the United States protected the 
islands from seizure by European powers, and in 1843, along with Great 
Britain and France, recognized their independence. American mission- 
aries reached the islands as early as 1819, and rapidly transformed the 
life and customs of the natives. 

Richard H. Dana, who vjsited Hawaii in i860, paid the following 
tribute to the labors of these pioneer Americans. "It is no small 
thing to say of the missionaries of the American Board Progress of 
that in less than forty years they have taught this whole Hawaii, 
people to read and write, to cipher and sew. They have given them 
an alphabet, grammar, and dictionary; preserved their language 
from extinction; given it a literature, and translated into it the Bible 
and works of devotion, science, entertainment, etc. They have 
established schools, reared up native teachers, and so pressed their 
work that now the proportion of inhabitants who can read and write 
is greater than in New England; and whereas they found these islanders 
a nation of half-naked savages, living in the surf and on the sand, eating 
raw fish, fighting among themselves, tyrannized over by feudal chiefs, 
and abandoned to sensuality, they now see them decently clothed, 
recognizing the laws of marriage, knowing something of accounts, 
going to school and public worship with more regularity than the 
people at home." 

THE TREASURY AND THE TARIFF 

The third part of Polk's programme, in addition to the acquisition 
of California and of Oregon, was the reestablishment of the inde- 
pendent treasury, first set up by the Democrats under j^^ ^^y^_ 
Van Buren and destroyed by the Whigs under Tyler, treasury 
The Democrats under Polk succeeded in restoring the ^^^ ®™' 
system, and it remains to-day an essential feature of the national 
financial machinery. 

The fourth part of Polk's plan for his administration, the read- 
justment of the tariff, was accomplished by the Walker Tariff Act of 
1846, so-called because in its enactment Congress was j^ie Walker 
largely guided by the advice of Secretary of the Treasury, tariff of 
Robert J. Walker. Although, to secure his election, 
Polk had led the people of Pennsylvania, where the iron and coal 
interests demanded protection, to believe that he stood for high tariff 
rates, he accepted the low rates of the new law. This tariff remained 
on the statute books for a period of eleven years. 



3i6 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

McMaster, United States, VII; Schurz, Henry Clay, II, 1 71-314; G. L. Rives, 
The United States and Mexico. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. Marcus Whitman and the Winning of Oregon. Bourne, Essays, 3-109; 
M. Eells, Reply to Professor Bourne; Epochs, VII, 10-13, and 26-35; H. H. Bancroft, 
Works, XXIX, 391-424, 446-469, and 508-554; T^rvce, Expansion, 106-135; Sparks, 
Expansion, 301-309. 

2. Explorations of John C. Fremont. Old South Leaflets, II, 45; Grinnell, 
Trails, 393-451; Epochs, VII, 53-60; J. C. Fremont, Memoirs of My Life; Bruce, 
Expansion, 136-165. 

3. The Discovery of Gold in California. Epochs, VII, 88-96; J. Royce, Cali- 
fornia, 220-246; The Argonauts of California, by a Pioneer; Contemporaries, IV, 42-47; 
H. H. Bancroft, Works, XXIII, 1-250; Sparks, Expansion, 336-350. 

4. The Opening up of Japan. CO. Vavi^ian, Diplomatic Negotiations, 244-281; 
Old South Leaflets, VII, 151; Foster, American Diplomacy in the Orient, 133-202. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

Lowell, Present Crisis, and Biglow Papers, First Series; G. Atherton, Splendid 
Idle Forties; Whittier, Angels of Buena Vista, and Voices of Freedom; Harte, Luck of 
Roaring Camp; Irving, Astoria; Howells,^ Boy's Town; Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit, 
and American Notes. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Would it have been wise for President Tyler to dismiss the cabinet of ex-President 
Harrison at once and secure an entirely new one of his own appointment? On what 
ground can you condemn President Tyler's stand toward Whig measures? Distinguish 
between the remote and the immediate causes of the Mexican War. Was the attitude 
of the United States in this war contrary to the Monroe Doctrine? What was the 
influence of the discovery of gold in California on the problems of transportation in 
the United States? Why has the Clayton-Bulwer treaty been called a diplomatic 
mistake? Why were the slave-holding statesmen generally in favor of territorial 
expansion? Account for the traditional friendship of the United States for China and 
Japan. What were the leading issues in current politics before the people in the 
presidential campaign of 1844? 



CHAPTER XXI 
THE QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 

THE COMPROMISE OF 1850 

President Polk's annexation policy raised again the question of 
what to do with slavery in the territories, after the Missouri Compro- 
mise had succeeded in keeping a degree of peace on the sub- The Wilmot 
ject for twenty-five years. Texas was naturally admitted Proviso, 
as a slave state, since slavery existed within her borders while she was 
an independent republic. The dispute over the question, as it con- 
cerned the lands to be acquired from Mexico, arose in Congress almost 
as soon as hostilities had begun with that country. David Wilmot 
precipitated the debate in 1846, by proposing in the House of Represen- 
tatives to add to a bill appropriating money to defray the expenses of 
making peace an amendment or proviso, to the effect that "neither 
slavery nor involuntary servitude" should ever exist in any part of the 
territory to be gained from Mexico by the war. The proviso evoked 
wide public discussion, but although it passed the House of Representa- 
tives, it failed in the Senate, where the slave states were in a majority 
after the annexation of Texas. 

Another proposal for congressional action was that Congress should 
run the Missouri Compromise line across the Mexican lands to the 
Pacific and exclude slavery north of that line in the new Two other 
territory as well as in the Louisiana country. The prin- go^ut^ong for 
ciple of congressional action in any form was rejected by the problem 
Calhoun, who contended that slavery must be allowed the^terri-^ '° 
to enter the territories with the Constitution, because tories. 
slaves were property, and ownership of property was guaranteed to all 
wherever the Constitution was in force. Congress could come to no 
decision, and in the annexation treaty with Mexico the question was 
left unsettled. 

The more northern country of Oregon, where slavery naturally 
would not thrive, was not coveted by the pro-slavery fac- Oregon de- 
tion with such ardor as were the Mexican lands, and after voted to 
some debate Oregon was organized as a territory in 1848 ^^^ °™" 
with slavery excluded. 

317 



3i8 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

The presidential campaign of 1848, which was the second presidential 
contest fought out on the slavery issue, served to bring into prominence 
" Squatter ^^^^^ another proposed solution of the problem of terri- 
sovereignty" torial slavery. The Democratic party placed at the 
presidential head of its ticket a "northern man with southern prin- 
campaign ciples," Lewis Cass of Michigan, who had a creditable 

crats in political record. He had served as the governor of the 

^^*^- territory of Michigan, as Secretary of War under Jackson, 

and later as minister to France. Casting aside not only the principle 
of congressional restriction of slavery in the territories, involved 
in the Wilmot Proviso and in the Missouri Compromise, but also 
Calhoun's theory that slavery went into the territories with the Con- 
stitution, Cass led his party in an attempt to please both sides, by 
favoring "squatter sovereignty," or "popular sovereignty" on the ques- 
tion. By his plan the people in the territories were to be allowed to 
decide for themselves whether or not slavery should exist in their midst. 

The Whigs, without a positive declaration on the question, named 
as their leader General Taylor of Louisiana of Mexican War fame, 
Th Wh" s ^^^ ^^y ^^ characterized by way of contrast to Cass as a 
in the "southern man with northern principles." A rough 

campaign. soldier, strictly trained to his profession, Taylor knew 
little of the refinements of life or of the principles and arts of politics. 
He was a slaveholder, but he had never manifested any interest in the 
extension of slavery. 

The Free Soil party, composed largely of the remnants of the old 

Liberty party, inscribed on their banners, "Free soil, free speech, free 

The Free- labor, free men," and indorsed as their candidate ex- 

soUers. President Van Buren, who had already been nominated 

by the "Barn-Burners," a dissenting Democratic faction in New York. 

The Free Boilers rejected the vague and compromising stand of the two 

larger parties which were endeavoring to please both sides, and openly 

favored the principles of the Wilmot Proviso; but they refused to take 

the radical stand of the Liberty party, which had aimed to abolish 

slavery in the states and territories alike. 

_. , Taylor was elected by a vote of 163 to 127 in the 

The result. , , ,, ^ / 

electoral colleges. 

When the first Congress of the Taylor administration came together 

in December, 1849, the country was surprised to learn that 

decision ^^ California, with 90,000 settlers, too impatient to await 

against organization as a territory and waiving the formality of the 

"enabling act," usually passed by Congress to authorize 

a territory to prepare for statehood, had organized a state govern- 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 319 

ment, framed a constitution, and was applying to Congress for imme- 
diate statehood. Taking no counsel of the national lawmakers, who 
were struggling to find a solution of the question of territorial slav- 
ery, California had calmly settled the matter, so far as she herself 
was concerned, by inserting in her constitution a clause forbidding 
slavery. The explanation of this decided stand was not far to seek. 
Rough mining camps, where sanitary conditions were anything but 
wholesome, where property rights were insecure and even human life 
unsafe, were not attractive places for the slaveholders with their 
valuable slave property; and the long journey across the continent was 
so full of perils that few attempted it with their slaves. Moreover, ■ 
the soil of California was not suited to cotton-raising, and mining 
operations required more skill than slaves possessed. Consequently 
there were too few slaveholders in California to vote slavery into the 
new constitution. 

The old champions, Calhoun, Webster, and Clay, came forward 
and wrangled in Congress for the last time. It was much like the 
debate on the question of slavery in the territories in 1820 -pj^^ ^^^ 
over again, though the new discussion referred to slavery debate in 
in the territory acquired from Mexico, while that of 1820 oiig^^ss. 
concerned slavery in the Louisiana country. 

As inthe crises of 1820 and of 1832, a compromise was proposed to 
please all sides and save the Union. Henry Clay, now called "The 
Great Pacificator," was the author of the Compromise jjenrv 
of 1850. The preamble of the resolutions which he Clay's plan of 
offered in the Senate declared their purpose to be " the *^°°^P''o°"^®- 
peace, concord and harmony of the Union of these states, to settle and 
adjust amicably all existing questions of controversy between them, 
arising out of the institution of slavery, upon a fair, equitable and just 
basis." Speaking to his fellow-senators. Clay said: "Coming from a 
slave state, as I do, I owe it to myself, I owe it to truth, I owe it to the 
subject, to say that no earthly power could induce me to vote for a 
specific measure for the introduction of slavery where it had not before 
existed. . . . Sir, while you reproach, and justly too, our British 
ancestors for the introduction of this institution upon the continent of 
America, I am, for one, unwilling that the posterity of the present 
inhabitants of California and New Mexico shall reproach us for doing 
just what we reproach Great Britain for doing to us." He asked his 
southern friends to give up their bitterness, pointing out to them that 
their section had made great gains in the recent acquisitions. He would 
have the North, on its part, forego its efforts to forbid territorial 
slaverv. Referring to the threat of the dissatislied Southern States 



320 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

to secede from the Union, he denied the right of a state to withdraw 
from the Union, and maintained that secession meant war. "War and 
dissolution of the Union are identical terms," he exclaimed. 

His compromise or "Omnibus Bill" embraced five points: first, as 
a concession to the anti-slavery North, the admission of California as a 
The "Omni- free State; second, as a concession to the pro-slavery 
bus BiU." South, the enactment of a strict fugitive slave law, to 

enable the Southerners the better to catch their runaway slaves in the 
North; third, the organization of the eastern part of the new posses- 
sions into two territories to be known as Utah and New Mexico, each 
somewhat larger than the present states bearing these names, without 
specifically deciding the slavery question one way or the other; fourth, 
the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; and 
fifth, the payment to Texas of $10,000,000 for giving up to the United 
States her claim to a certain part of what is now New Mexico. 

Too weak to speak for himself, Calhoun was carried into the Senate 
Chamber, where he sat helpless while a colleague read his last message 
Calhoun ^^ ^^^^ American people. In another month his voice 

opposes was silent forever. He declared that the Union was in 

compromise, (janger, and that for this serious state of affairs there were 
two leading reasons. One of these was the continued agitation of the 
slavery question in general on the part of the northern people, and 
the other was the aggression of the North in proposing to disturb the 
equilibrium of the two sections and make the new territories free soil. 
If she succeeded in her purpose of excluding slavery from the new 
territories, three-fourths of the more than two million square miles of 
territory acquired by the United States since 1783 would be free. 
"Unless something decisive is done, I again ask, what is to stop this 
agitation, before the great and final object at which it aims — the 
abolition of slavery in the states — is consummated? Is it, then, not 
certain, that if something decisive is not now done to arrest it, the 
South will be forced to choose between abolition and secession?" He 
was opposed to all compromise, and demanded that the North cease 
her agitation, return all fugitive slaves, and agree to open the territories 
to slavery. This was in general the position of the slavery element in 
Congress. 

Webster favored the compromise. Back in the thirties, when the 
agitation over the admission of Texas into the Union was beginning to 
Webster disturb the peace of the country, he, with many other 

favors northern leaders, had denounced slavery as " a great social, 

compromise. j^Qj-g^]^ a^j^d political evil." Now in his famous Seventh- 
of-March speech he took the middle way. He held that slavery was 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 321 

already excluded from California and New Mexico by their very physi- 
cal characteristics. "I would not take pains to reaffirm an ordinance 
of Nature," he declared, "nor to reenact the will of God. And I would 
put in no Wilmot Proviso, for the purpose of a taunt or a reproach." 
He defended the principle of the Fugitive Slave Law and denounced 
the abolitionists, whose "operations for the last twenty years have 
produced nothing good or valuable." On the other hand, he entreated 
the Southerners to dismiss the thought of secession, with its attending 
indescribable horrors of civil war. "Secession! Peaceable seces- 
sion ! Sir, your eyes and mine are never destined to see that miracle. 
The dismemberment of this vast country without convulsion! The 
breaking up of the fountains of the great deep without ruffling the 
surface ! . . . There can be no such thing as a peaceable secession. . . . 
No, sir! no, sir! I will not state what might produce the disruption 
of the states; but, sir, I see it as plainly as I see the sun in heaven — I 
see that disruption must produce such a war as I will not describe." 
The anti-slavery North viewed with consternation Webster's 
the seeming defection of their one-time leader. "apostasy." 

"So fallen! so lost! the light withdrawn 

Which once he wore! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 

Forevermore ! 
Revile him not — the Tempter hath 

A snare for all; 
And pitying tears, not scorn and wrath, 

Befit his fall." 

Thus the poet Whittier voiced the anti-slavery view of Webster's 
advocacy of Clay's compromise bill. It was generally believed that 
the orator was seeking support in the South for the next presidential 
election, but a more charitable view is that in his love of union, which 
he despaired of without compromise, he was ready to sacrifice even a 
point of morals. 

William H. Seward, ex-Governor of New York and the new Senator 
from that state, who was destined to succeed to Webster's position as 
the leader of political anti-slavery, gave utterance to a geward 
bold phrase that later became a watchword in the anti- opposes 
slavery crusade. In a strong speech against compromise, <^°™P''o°"se. 
he said, "There is a higher law than the Constitution, which regulates 
our authority over the domain." This happy recognition of a "higher 
law" served to crystallize anti-slavery sentiment, and exercised great 
influence in the coming decade. 

After more than nine months of struggle, in one of the longest ses- 



322 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



sions on record, Congress passed Clay's proposals in four separate 
jjjg acts and adjourned. Two months before the end a 

compromise tragic event temporarily suspended proceedings and 
probably influenced the final outcome. President Taylor, 
the straightforward old soldier, a man of direct methods rather than of 
compromise, who was under the 
influence of Seward and was sup- 
posed to incline toward the views 
of anti-slavery, suddenly died. 
Vice President Fillmore of New 
York, who succeeded to the 
presidency, favored the compro- 
mise, and readily signed the vari- 
ous acts. 

One of the features of the 
Compromise of 1850 most objec- 
The Fugi- tionable to Northern- 
tive Slave ers was the Fugitive 
^^' Slave Law. This en- 

actment was placed on the statute 
books in order to remedy, if pos- 
sible, the defects of an old law on 
the subject passed in 1793, the en- 
forcement of which depended in 
part on state officials. After the 

Supreme Court had intimated in 1842 that the states had the power 
to prohibit their officials from performing duties imposed on them 
by a national law, the states, in so-called Personal Liberty Laws, be- 
gan to prohibit their officials from assisting in carrying out the pro- 
visions of the national Fugitive Slave Law. The new Fugitive Slave 
Law of 1850 provided for enforcement by United States officials. A 
slaveholder, appearing in the North to find an escaped slave, could 
now avail himself of the aid of United States commissioners, appointed 
by United States Circuit courts, who were empowered to summon to 
their aid all bystanders in making the arrest. To give aid to the 
fugitive, in resistance to the officers of the law, was to be punishable 
by a fine of $1000 or six months' imprisonment. There could be no 
habeas corpus for the fugitive black, no trial by jury, no examination of 
witnesses, and no appeal from the decision of the commissioner to a 
higher court. To prove his property the slaveholder's own word or 
that of his agent was sufficient, while the negro was not allowed to testify 
in his own behalf. Such a sweeping denial to slaves of the common 




WiLLi.\M H. Seward 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 323 

Anglo-Saxon liberty rights was customary in the laws of the slave states, 
but the North objected to such a denial for the nation at large. 

Exciting arrests and thrilling rescues startled the country. A 
northern leader publicly declared, "I have no more hesitation in 
helping a fugitive slave than I have in snatching a lamb Evasions of 
from the jaws of a wolf, or of disengaging an infant from the Fugitive 
the talons of an eagle." The sentiment was widespread, ^^^ ^^* 
and in the face of it the law was of little avail and arrests few in 
number. By stealthy means, popularly known as the Underground 
Railroad, adopted by the friends of the slaves to outwit the law, hun- 
dreds of blacks every year succeeded in making their way north, 
chiefly through Ohio and Pennsylvania, into free Canada; and from 
year to year their friends in the North grew in number. In the light 
of results it appears that the Southerners would have done better for 
the cause of slavery if they had never demanded the new law, for the 
steady loss of friends which went on in the North under the law's 
operation was ultimately a far greater detriment to their cause than 
any that would have been involved in the immediate loss of a few 
thousand dollars' worth of property each year; but this was naturally 
not foreseen at the time. 

The partisans of slavery were further exasperated by the passage 
in many northern states of more Personal Liberty Laws, which sought 
to put legal obstacles in the way of enforcement of the Moj-g pg^. 
new Fugitive Slave Law. Under another name these sonai Lib- 
were the most practical nullification laws ever enacted by the Northern 
states against the laws of the United States. Vermont States, 
denied the use of her jails to the southern masters for the temporary 
detention of recaptured fugitives, required the attorney general 
of the state to defend the fugitives in the courts, and guaranteed 
to the latter the right of trial by jury. Slaves carried into the state 
were declared to be free, and to take a fugitive out of the state was 
strictly forbidden. 

Harriet Beecher Stowe was stirred by the stories of captures and 
escapes that filled every part of the land. One Sunday morning, at the 
communion table of a little church in Brunswick, Maine, <<uncle 
the seat of Bowdoin College, where her husband was a pro- Tom's ^^ 
f essor, she was suddenly overcome by a vision of the cruel- 
ties of slavery, and with tears and sobs hastened home to write out that 
part of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" which concerns the death of Uncle Tom. 
When she read the description to her little son he burst out sobbing and 
cried, "Oh, Mamma, slavery is the most cursed thing in the world!" 
Springing from a deeply religious nature, the book discussed the moral 



324 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

aspects of slavery from the anti-slavery point of view. It was wholly 
one-sided, but it proved to be a powerful agent in arousing in the youth 
of the land sympathy for the slaves. One hundred thousand copies 
of it were sold in a few weeks, and over three hundred thousand copies 
in the first year, 1852; eight powerful printing presses running day and 
night were barely able to keep up with the popular demand. It is 
not an exaggeration to say that no other printed book ever agitated the 
American public as did this one. Its influence was especially strong 
on the youth of the land, who were to become voters in the next decade. 

When the Whigs assembled in their national convention of 1852 
the founder of their party lay dying. Clay lived to approve the work 
The death of the convention, but died before the election. As an 
of Clay. orator, Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senator, 

and Secretary of State, he was one of the greatest political leaders of 
the nation. Three times he was the candidate of his party for the 
presidency and as many times he was defeated. His political judgment 
was occasionally faulty, as his untimely introduction of the bank ques- 
tion into the campaign of 1832 and the letters on Texas in 1844 tend 
to show. He did not possess great intellect and he was not highly 
educated, but his versatility was extraordinary, and he enjoyed to 
a remarkable degree the ability to win the love and devotion of his 
followers. 

One of Clay's last public acts was to join with forty-three other 
members of Congress in signing the following pledge: "The under- 
Determina- signed, members of the thirty-first Congress of the United 
thTcom-^^ States, believing that renewal of sectional controversy on 
promise. the subject of slavery would be both dangerous to the 

Union and destructive of its objects, and seeing no mode by which such 
controversy can be avoided except by a strict adherence to the settle- 
ment thereof effected by the Compromise Acts passed at the last 
session of Congress, do hereby declare their intention to maintain the 
said settlement inviolate and to resist all attempts to repeal or to alter 
the acts aforesaid, unless by general consent of the friends of the meas- 
ure, and to remedy such evils, if any, as time and experience may 
develop." Then followed the further pledge to support no candidate 
for office known to be opposed to the compromise measures or to be 
desirous of renewing the slavery controversy in any form. 

Daniel Webster, who was associated with Clay in public life for 
almost forty years, died a few months later. He never received the 
The death of honor of a presidential nomination at the hands of a 
Webster. great party, though fourteen electoral votes were cast 

for him in 1836. He was not a man to inspire a warm personal fol- 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 325 

lowing; his claim to greatness lay rather in his success as a constitu- 
tional lawyer, as an efficient Senator and Secretary of State, and in 
his wonderful ability as an orator. 

Passing over Webster, who sought the prize of a presidential 
nomination even at the very end of his career, the Whigs for a third 
time gave their nomination to a military chieftain, Gen- 
eral Winfield Scott, the concjueror of Mexico; the Demo- dentwi^cain- 
crats, after a long struggle in their convention, named P^jsn of 
General Franklin Pierce of New Hampshire, and the 
Free Soilers Senator John P. Hale of New Hampshire. Both the 
Whigs and the Democrats ardently proclaimed the sacredness of the 
Compromise of 1850, but with the odium of the Fugitive Slave Law 
resting heavily upon them the Whigs met an overwhelming defeat. 
Pierce received 254 electoral votes to 42 for Scott. Said a wit of the 
time with truth, "Here lies the Whig party, which died of an effort 
to swallow the Fugitive Slave Law." It was unfortunate for the 
Whigs that their President was in office when that ill-fated bill came 
from the capitol for executive approval, for few Presidents in the crisis 
would have refused their signature; and it was unfortunate that on the 
two occasions when they succeeded in placing their candidate in the 
Wliite House he soon died. Misfortune attended the party of Clay 
and Webster throughout its history. New phases of the slavery ques- 
tion swept the Republican party into existence in 1854, and in the 
presidential election of 1856 the Whigs waged their last contest. 

THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT 

Franklin Pierce was another dark horse in national politics, without 
distinction as a statesman or as a lawyer and with very little as a 
soldier. While pushing their party candidate. General Franklin 
Scott, the Whigs published a campaign book of a half Pierce, 
dozen pages, one inch by one-half inch in size, printed in diminutive 
type, and inscribed, "The Military Services of General Franklin Pierce." 
Pierce was an amiable gentleman of fine manners, who made many 
friends, but he was devoid of most of the qualities of statesmanship. 

The new leaders, who came to the front after the death of Calhoun, 
Clay, and Webster, could not be expected to stand by the compromises 
of their predecessors. They had not felt the nationalizing squatter 
influences of the War of 181 2, but had been bred in the sovereignty 
succeeding period of sectional strife. Within a year after and *°^^^ 
the inauguration of President Pierce, Senator Stephen A. Nebraska. 
Douglas of Illinois, who had not signed Clay's pledge of silence on the 
subject of slavery, proposed a law in the Senate of the United States 



326 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

which would set aside the Missouri Compromise of 1S20 as a method 
of deaUng with slavery in that part of the Louisiana Territory not yet 
admitted to statehood, and would place the stamp of approval on 
Cass's doctrine of popular sovereignty. In the Northern States, where 
it was supposed that the law of 1820, which had regulated the subject 
of slavery in the Louisiana Territory for more than thirty years, 
was forever fixed, Douglas's proposal aroused a storm of protest. 

The restless frontiersmen of Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Missouri 
were now desiring to settle in the Louisiana lands beyond the Missouri, 
The essence ^^^ '^^ ^^^ ^^ their interest, Douglas claimed, that he 
of the new proposed the new law. Utah and New Mexico, that is, 
^^' all the Mexican cession outside of California, had already 

been organized as territories, and by the terms of the Compromise of 
1850 the people in the two territories were left free to decide the slavery 
question within their borders as they thought best. Douglas's plan 
was to throw open to settlement in the same way the northern or free 
portion of the Louisiana country by organizing it into two territories, 
Kansas in the south and Nebraska in the north, and to allow the 
settlers therein to exercise the right of popular sovereignty on the 
question of slavery in their midst. The Missouri Compromise, which 
had declared the same territory free soil, was expressly declared "inop- 
erative and void." Kansas was expected to develop into a slave ter- 
ritory and Nebraska into free soil. To the self-reliant Americans of 
the frontier, who from the early days had always preferred to decide 
matters for themselves and to do things in their own way, the idea of 
making their own decision on slavery in their midst was decidedly 
popular. The proposition, however, meant giving slavery another 
chance to secure a foothold in territory already devoted to freedom; 
freedom had nothing to gain and everything to lose by the proposal, 
slavery nothing to lose and everything to gain. Probably no measure 
in Congress was ever more bitterly debated than was the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill, but it passed both houses of Congress and was signed 
by the President, May 30, 1854. 

Every new political party springs from among those who have a 
political grievance and who despair of improvement under the existing 
The origin of Parties. The Democratic-Republican party was made up 
the Repub- of those who disapproved of the way in which the Fed- 
ican pa y. eralists were administering the government under Wash- 
ington, and the Whigs embraced those who were opposed to Jackson 
and his policies. The present Republican party now came into 
existence on the single principle of opposition to allowing slavery 
another opportunity to enter the territories. There were Free Soilers 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 327 



in the new organization, Anti-Nebraska Democrats, Anti-Slavery or 
Conscience Whigs, all united on the proposition that the Compromise 
of 1820 should be kept sacred and that slavery should not be allowed 
to spread to territories once made free. The Republicans believed 
that Congress and not the people of the territories should decide such a 
question, and that the settlement of the question in 1820 should 
remain fixed. 

The name Republican for the new party was suggested at an anti- 
slavery meeting at Ripon, Wisconsin, while the Kansas-Nebraska Act 

was still before Congress, and was adopted for the first ^^ 

• T 1 TIT- 1 • • T 1 The rapid 

time by a state convention at Jackson, Michigan, m July, growth of 

shortly after the bill became a law. This convention in the new 

. party. 

Michigan may be looked upon as the birthplace of the 

Republican party, and it is signifi- 
cant of the growing political influ- 
ence of the West that the new 
party struck its roots first in that 
section. Other states rapidly fol- 
lowed Michigan, and in 1855a call 
was issued for the first national 
convention of the party to meet in 
Pittsburg, February 22, 1856. So 
strong was the movement that in 
Congress, 1855-1857, there were 
117 Representatives and 11 Sena- 
tors pledged to oppose slavery in 
the territories. 

Stephen A. Douglas, who had 
precipitated the crisis, was born 
in Vermont in 1813, Stephen A. 
and at the age of Douglas and 
,11 . ,1 his motives, 
twenty had migrated 

to Illinois, where he became a dis- 
trict attorney two years after his arrival. At twenty-five he was in 
the state legislature by the side of Abraham Lincoln, at twenty-eight 
he was a justice of the supreme court of the state; at thirty a mem- 
ber of the national House of Representatives from Illinois, and at thirty- 
five a United States Senator from the same state. He was a man 
of great ambition and energy, and of unquestioned ability as a 
speaker and political leader. After the disappearance of Calhoun, 
Clay, and Webster, Douglas was the most prominent figure in national 
politics down to i860. The belief was prevalent that he took the bold 




Stephen A. Douglas 



328 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

step of disturbing the Missouri Compromise in order that he might win 
the presidential nomination at the hands of his party in 1856. It was 
the opportunity for a master politician. His measure was sure to win 
popularity in the slave-holding states, and from its local option features 
might be expected to prove attractive in other sections, especially in 
the West. It was also perfectly constitutional, for the Missouri Com- 
promise, like any other law of Congress, was subject to repeal by the 
body that enacted it. 

The impracticability of the Kansas-Nebraska Act became apparent 
almost as soon as it was passed. The champions of slavery from the 
The practical South and the champions of freedom from the North 
working of rushed out to the plains of Kansas, each side seeking to 
sovereignty get there first and under popular sovereignty organize the 
in Kansas. territorial government in its own interests, for slavery or 
for freedom, before the other side could arrive. The law was an invi- 
tation to the champions to come to the frontier and fight it out; and 
fight they did. 

Under the auspices of the New England Emigrant Aid Society 
several thousand partisans of freedom arrived in Kansas before the 
The failure end of the summer of 1854 and founded Topeka, Law- 
of the plan. rence, and other towns on the rich bottom lands of the 
Kansas River. The pro-slavery immigrants from Missouri founded 
Atchison, Lecompton, and Leavenworth at about the same time. 
On the occasion of the first election in the new territory early in 1855 
several thousand Missouri "border ruffians" crossed the line into 
Kansas, stuffed the ballot boxes, and succeeded in electing a pro-slavery 
legislature, which later sent a duly accredited pro-slavery delegate 
to Congress. The opponents of slavery repudiated these acts and 
sent one of their number to represent them in Congress as the dele- 
gate of the territory, while they proceeded to organize a government 
of their own. The lovers of liberty in Kansas, like the lovers of 
liberty in California, called a constitutional convention without the 
permission of Congress, and in that body, which assembled at Topeka, 
they framed a free constitution, later ratified it at the polls, and under 
it sought admission into the Union as a free state; they even went so far 
as to elect a governor of their own, to serve after Kansas should become 
a state. Under orders from President Pierce United States troops dis- 
persed this "impertinent" Topeka government, and its leaders were 
indicted for treason. Kansas was torn between the supporters of the 
"free state" government and those of the opposing government backed 
by the President. 

The nation entered the presidential year of 1856 with its attention 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 329 

focused on "bleeding Kansas." The first two months of the year 
were marked by a bitter struggle in the national House of The exciting 
Representatives between the hosts of freedom and of y®^^ °^ ^^5^- 
slavery over the election of a Speaker for that body. Nathaniel P. 
Banks of Massachusetts, an opponent of the extension of slavery 
into the territories, was elected by a close vote. On the twentieth 
of May, Charles Sumner of Massachusetts made a powerful speech 
in the Senate on ''The Crime against Kansas," in which he defended 
the free state government there and poured vials of contempt on the 
slaveholders and their methods in Kansas. Senator Butler of South 
Carolina was especially scored. It was a speech which for its bitter- 
ness might have called forth the condemnation of the fair-minded 
of all sections, but for the cruel chastisement that followed. Two 
days after the delivery of the speech, while he was sitting at his desk 
in the Senate Chamber after that body had adjourned, Sumner was 
struck down and almost beaten to death by Brooks of South Caro- 
lina, a member of the House of Representatives and a relative of 
Butler. On the day intervening between the speech and the assault, 
the Missourians in Kansas tried to wipe out the free state capital at 
Lawrence, and destroyed the public buildings, the hotel, the printing 
presses, and some of the private dwellings; and three days after the 
sack of Lawrence, on May 24, that crime was avenged by John Brown 
and a small band of anti-slavery followers, who in a single night dragged 
six slavery sympathizers from their cabins at Osawatomie on the 
Pottawatomie in Kansas and butchered them in cold blood. Brown 
was "of the Puritan stock, a Cromwellian, who believed in God and at 
the same time in 'keeping his powder dry.' He believed in 'the sword 
of the Lord and of Gideon,' and acted accordingly." These outrages 
of civil war perpetrated on both sides showed plainly that popular 
sovereignty had brought to Kansas not the peace which Douglas had 
predicted, but the sword. 

The national House of Representatives sent a com- ^ 

f . . . , ... , . The congres- 

mittee or mvestigation to the scene of strife, and its sionai inves- 

proceedings served to keep the popular interest in Kansas ^s^tion m 

at a high pitch throughout the presidential campaign. 

With "bleeding Kansas" as the one absorbing theme and with a 

new party of unknown but rapidly growing strength in -pj^^ presi- 

the field, drawing a majority of the Whigs into its ranks, dentiai cam- 

the national contest was bound to be a stirring one. The isse'! °The 

Republicans, adjourning from their preliminarv conven- Republican 
-r.- 1 1 • TM M 1 1 1 • ' • 1 • nonunabon. 

tion m Pittsburg, met later m Philadelphia to write their 

first platform of principles and to name their first standard-bearer. 



330 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

They condemned the administration for the outcome of popular 
sovereignty in Kansas and denounced slavery as a "relic of barbarism." 
They passed over William H. Seward, the real leader of the party, who 
was too prominent and had made too many enemies by his bold course 
to be a successful candidate, and gave the first place on their ticket to 
John C. Fremont of California, who was popularly known as the 
"Pathfinder" because of four expeditions which he had made across 
the continent to California and to Oregon in the forties under the 
auspices of the national government. 

Douglas, the real leader of the Democrats, was likewise passed 
over by his party because of the storm of disapproval called forth 
by the failure of his doctrine in Kansas. President 
crats and Pierce, whose fate recalls that of Fillmore in 1850, could 

N^h^°°^' ^^^ ^^ renominated with any hope of election, because 
he had signed the Kansas-Nebraska measure. William L. 
Marcy, the Secretary of State, was a possible candidate, but after 
a spirited contest in the convention the nomination fell to James 
Buchanan, minister to Great Britain, who had been absent from the 
country when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed and therefore 
had taken no part in the exciting national politics between 1854 and 
1856. A small third party, called the Know-Nothings, organized to 
oppose the growing foreign element in the country, joined with the 
remnant of the Whigs in support of ex-President Fillmore. 

The Southerners threatened to secede from the Union if the "Black 
Republicans," so-called in derision from their devotion to the interests 
Th uit °^ ^^^ negroes, succeeded in electing their candidate. 
Buchanan secured a popular vote of 1,838,000 and 174 
votes in the electoral colleges, to 1,340,000 popular votes and 114 elec- 
toral votes for Fremont. Since 1840 the showing of the anti-slavery 
element, as it entered into national politics, had been 7000 votes in 1840, 
62,000 in 1844, 290,000 in 1848, 156,000 in 1852, and 1,340,000 in 1856. 

THE DRED SCOTT DECISION 

The political career of James Buchanan resembles that of John 
Quincy Adams in the length of his public services and the number of 
important posts which he filled, though not in the distinction of the 
James services rendered. When Buchanan entered upon the 

Buchanan. presidency at the advanced age of sixty-six, he had 
served successively as a member of the House of Representatives and 
of the United States Senate from Pennsylvania, minister to Russia, 
Secretary of State, and minister to Great Britain. Despite his ex- 
perience he was a weak President. 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 331 

The several plans for the settlement of the question of slavery in 

the territories were still before the nation. First, there was the plan 

of allowing Congress to decide the question, which was 

followed in the Ordinance of 1787 and in the Missouri Scott Deci- 

Compromise and proposed in the Wilmot Proviso; sionoftheSu- 

preme Court, 
second, that of Cass and Douglas, embodied in the 

Kansas-Nebraska Act, of allowing the people themselves in the 

territories to make the decision; third, that of -Calhoun, who had 

maintained that the Constitution carried slavery into the territories 

with its guarantee of protection of property rights. A few days after 

the inauguration of President Buchanan the Supreme Court of the 

United States set aside the plan of Douglas, which at that time was 

in the ascendency, quite as suddenly and unexpectedly as Douglas 

himself had brushed aside the congressional plan of the Missouri 

Compromise, and by a decision bearing the dignity and the prestige 

of the Supreme Bench indorsed the plan of Calhoun. 

This decision, which was delivered in 1857, was occasioned by a case 
which had arisen in Missouri ten years earUer. A slave, Dred Scott 
by name, whom his master had taken from the slave j^^ leading 
state of Missouri, into the territory of Minnesota, which points in the 
had been made free by the Missouri Compromise, and ^"^lon. 
then had brought back to Missouri, sued for his freedom on the ground 
that residence in a free country had made him free. The court held 
that a negro descended from slaves could not be a citizen of the United 
States and therefore could not bring a suit at law in the courts of the 
United States. Here the tribunal might have stopped, as this settled 
the question before it. The court, however, went on to say that even 
if Dred Scott had had the right to bring the suit, residence in the sup- 
posed free territory could not make him free, because that territory 
was not legally free and Congress had had no right to declare it to be 
free; that, therefore, the Missouri Compromise of 1820, declaring the 
Louisiana country north of 36° 30' to be free territory, was unconstitu- 
tional; that a slave was a piece of property, the ownership of which 
was guaranteed by the fifth amendment of the Constitution just like 
the ownership of any piece of property; and that the provisions of the 
Constitution applied to the territories as well as to the states. The 
minority of the court presented a powerful dissenting opinion. 

Said President Buchanan in a message to Congress: "I cordially 
congratulate you on the final settlement by the Supreme president 
Court of the United States of the question of slavery in Buchanan on 
the territories, which had presented an aspect so truly *^^ ecision. 
formidable at the commencement of my administration. The right has 



332 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

been established of every citizen to take his property of every kind, in- 
cluding slaves, into the common territories belonging equally to all the 
states of the confederacy, and to have it protected there under the 
Federal Constitution. Neither Congress nor a territorial legislature 
nor any human power has any authority to impair this vested right." 
The South was highly delighted over the revolutionary decision, 
from which there was no appeal. The North, on the other hand, was 
Effects of in consternation. No longer could a fight against slavery 

the decision, jj^ ^j^g territories be of any avail, if the national govern- 
ment was required by the Constitution to recognize slavery there. If 
the slaveholding faction had so far gained possession of the law-making 
and law-interpreting branches of the government as to win two impor- 
tant concessions, first the Kansas-Nebraska Act and second the Dred 
Scott Decision, what would be the next step? Might not the same 
faction insist also that the Constitution carried slavery into the states? 
Abraham Lincoln declared, "If I were in Congress, and a vote were to 
come up on a question whether slavery should be prohibited in a new 
territory, in spite of the Dred Scott Decision, I would vote that it 
should." Senator Seward said, "Let the court recede. Whether it 
recedes or not, we shall reorganize the court and thus reform its 
political sentiments and practices and bring them into harmony with 
the Constitution and the laws of the nation." 

THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION AND THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS 

DEBATES 

The encouraged pro-slavery party in Kansas proceeded to prepare 
for statehood, just as the free state people had tried to do at Topeka. 
They framed a state constitution at Lecompton in Novem- 
Lecompton ber, 1857, and by a ruse attempted to make it appear that 
constitution g^ majority of the people of Kansas approved of the docu- 
ment. It was a slave constitution. "The right of the 
owner of a slave to such slave ... is ... as inviolable as the right 
of the owner of any property whatever. . . . Free negroes shall not 
be permitted to live in this state under any circumstances." The 
people were to vote for the instrument "with slavery" or "without 
slavery," which meant only that if it should be adopted "without 
slavery" slaves might not be brought in, but that the slaveholders 
already there would be protected in their slave property and that free 
negroes would never be allowed to live in the state. Since they were 
denied the opportunity of passing on this constitution as a whole, which 
was the only course that the anti-slavery partisans could follow with 
consistency, they spurned the trick and refrained from voting alto- 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 333 

gether; and the constitution "with slavery" was approved by a vote 
of 6143 to 589. The opponents of slavery, however, succeeded in 
electing a majority of the legislature under the new constitution. When 
this body had met and directed that the people should have another 
chance to vote on the constitution as a whole, the constitution was 
rejected by a majority of 10,000. There could be no doubt as to the 
mind of the people of Kansas in regard to slavery. 

Now came the supreme moment of President Buchanan's ofhcial 
career. A similar crisis had come to President Fillmore when he was 
forced to a decision on the Fugitive Slave Law, and to Rejection of 
President Pierce when the Kansas-Nebraska Bill came the Lecomp- 
to him from Congress; and, like these two Presidents, tion by 
Buchanan wrecked his administration by his choice. In a Congress, 
message to Congress he urged the lawmakers to give to the Lecompton 
constitution their official approval and under it make Kansas a slave 
state. Kansas is "at this moment as much a slave state as Georgia or 
South Carolina," wrote the President. A violent struggle followed in 
Congress. Douglas rushed to the defense of the principle of popular 
sovereignty, which he claimed was outraged by the manner in which 
the Lecompton constitution was adopted, defied the President, and 
with all his powers opposed the Lecompton constitution. It was not 
against slavery as an institution that he was fighting, for he cared not, 
he professed, whether it was "voted down or voted up"; rather he was 
fighting for the right of the people of the territory to a fair vote. In 
the North Douglas's dramatic break with the administration and 
opposition to the Lecompton constitution were popular, but the South 
was enraged at the seeming desertion of the leader who had done so 
much for slavery four years earlier. The bill to admit Kansas under 
the slave constitution passed the Senate but failed in the House of 
Representatives; and then in the deadlock the two houses passed a 
bill, introduced in the House of Representatives by English of Indiana, 
according to which certain gifts of lands were offered to Kansas, if 
she would accept the Lecompton constitution. By 11,088 votes 
to 1788 the people rejected the bribe, and Kansas waited until 1861, 
when she was made a state under a free constitution. 

In the summer of 1858, after he had broken with the administration, 
Douglas returned to Illinois to seek reelection in the state legislature 
to the United States Senate. Opposing him, as the can- 
didate of the new Republican party, was his old friend, Douglas de- 
Abraham Lincoln. The latter, when still a boy, had ^.?.*®^.^'^ 

, . , , . ^^ , 1 . Illinois. 

come mto the state from the slave state of Kentucky, while 

Douglas had come in his young manhood from the free state of Ver- 



334 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

mont. Both were self-made men, both active in the profession of the 
law, and both had served in the Illinois legislature and in the lower 
house of Congress. Lincoln left Washington after a single term in 
the House of Representatives and returned to Illinois to resume 
the practice of law, while Douglas remained at the national capital 
and entered the Senate. The Kansas-Nebraska Act aroused Lincoln 
to a fresh interest in politics, and he again entered the political arena. 
When Douglas began to tour the state for the sake of securing a Demo- 
cratic majority in the legislature which should return him to the 
Senate, Lincoln, as the Republican candidate for the same office, 
challenged him to a series of debates and Douglas accepted. 

The principal topic in the debates was slavery in the territories, and 
on this subject Lincoln propounded to his adversary a fatal question. 
Douglas's ^^^ latter had already alienated the South by his attitude 
"Freeport on the Lecompton constitution, and by merciless logic 
Lincoln now forced him to take his stand in opposition 
to the Dred Scott Decision. Which theory held, queried Lincoln, that 
of the Dred Scott Decision or that of popular sovereignty? Douglas 
attempted to defend popular sovereignty by proclaiming what is now 
known as the "Freeport Doctrine," because it was at this town in 
Illinois that he committed himself on the subject. Lincoln asked, 
"Can the people of a United States territory, in any lawful way, 
against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery 
from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution?" Douglas 
replied: "I answer emphatically, as Mr. Lincoln has heard me answer 
a hundred times from every stump in Illinois, that in my opinion the 
people of a territory can, by lawful means, exclude slavery from their 
limits prior to the formation of a state constitution. ... It matters not 
what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to the abstract 
question whether slavery may or may not go into a territory under 
the Constitution, the people have the lawful means to introduce it or 
to exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist a 
day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local police regula- 
tions. Those police regulations can only be estabUshed by the local 
legislature; and if the people are opposed to slavery, they will elect 
representatives to that body, who will, by unfriendly legislation, 
effectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the 
contrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. 
Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on 
that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave 
territory or a free territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska 
bill. I hope Mr. Lincoln deems my answer satisfactory on that point." 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 335 

And Mr. Lincoln was satisfied, for he saw that such an answer would 
turn the Southerners from Douglas beyond all hope of reconciliation, 
and deprive him of their support for the presidency in i860. "I am 
after larger game," said Lincoln to friends, who opposed his propounding 
the question; "if Douglas answers as you say he will, he can never 
be President, and the battle of i860 is worth a hundred of this." The 
sum and substance of Douglas's answer, according to Lincoln, was 
"that a thing may be lawfully driven from the place where it has a 
lawful right to stay." 

Lincoln lost the senatorship, but by widening the breach in the 
Democratic party between the followers of Douglas and the Douglas wins 
radical Southerners he was making possible the national vie- reelection to 
tory of the Republicans under his own leadership in i860. 

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 1849-1861 

While slavery was breeding strife in domestic politics, the same 
question obtruded itself into the conduct of foreign affairs. In 1849, 
at the close of the Mexican War, and in 185 1, Narcisso 
Lopez led filibustering expeditions from the United States expeditions 
to Cuba to free the island from the power of Spain and ^ acquire 
possibly prepare the way for its ultimate annexation to 
the United States as a slave state. The people of the island did 
not rise up for freedom as the invaders had expected; the expedition 
failed, and with some of his men Lopez was executed on the public 
square of Havana. Among the followers of Lopez were members of 
several of the leading families of New Orleans. When the news of the 
execution became known in that city an angry mob insulted the Spanish 
consul, offered insults to a picture of the Queen of Spain and even 
to the Spanish flag, for which indignities the Secretary of State, Daniel 
Webster, felt constrained to offer an apology to the Spanish govern- 
ment. 

Relations with Spain were again strained early in 1854, when the 
Spanish authorities at Havana, Cuba, seized the Black Warrior, a 
merchant vessel of the United States, for an alleged ^j^^ ^^^^^ 
violation of the commercial regulations of that port. Warrior 
This time it was the part of Spain to offer an apology; ^^*^° 
and backed by the enthusiastic support of the people President Pierce 
made a demand on Spain for reparation. The reply of the Spaniards 
was unsatisfactory, but fortunately the attention of the people of 
the United States was diverted from the Spanish situation by the 
absorbing question of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Ultimately the 
Black Warrior was released. 



336 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

In the fall of the same year, 1854, it was again Spain's turn to take 
offense, when James Buchanan, United States minister to Great Britain, 
The Ostend J- Y. Mason, United States minister to France, and Pierre 
Manifesto. Soule, United States minister to Spain, met at Ostend, 
Belgium, at the direction of President Pierce, and prepared and sent 
to the President a paper on the subject of Cuba, called the Ostend 
Manifesto. The document set forth the argument that the island 
of Cuba was of no advantage to Spain, but that, if surrendered to 
the United States at a price to be agreed upon, the result would be 
of benefit to both countries as well as to Cuba herself. The claim 
was made that "self-preservation is the first law of nature," and that 
if Cuba in the hands of Spain endangered the peace of the United 
States, as seemed likely, the United States, "by every law, human 
and divine," would be justified in taking it by force. It seems never 
to have occurred to the overzealous ministers that Cuba in the hands 
of the United States, because of the disputes over slavery that would 
inevitably follow, would be a greater menace to the peace of the Union 
than if she remained in the hands of Spain. 

The President did not see fit to act in accordance with the advice. 
The people of the United States were occupied with the difficulties 
The advice arising out of the Kansas question and had no heart for 
rejected. aggression against a foreign power, and Spain's injured 

feelings had a chance to subside. 

In the next year, 1855, William Walker, a citizen of the United 
States, with a band of associates, set up a revolutionary government 
FUibustering ^^ Nicaragua in Central America. The usurpers signaHzed 
against their rule by the almost immediate reintroduction of slav- 

Nicaragua. ^^^ j^^^ ^-^^ country, though the natives had abolished it, 
and held their ground for two years before they were driven out. A 
second expedition proved futile, and in a third, against Honduras, he 
was at last seized and executed in that country in i860. Although 
he never had the ofiicial backing of the United States government in 
his acts, outside nations regarded him as aided and abetted by the 
slaveholding element of the Southern States of the Union. 

ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 

From the excitement occasioned in foreign and domestic affairs by 
the subject of slavery in the decade of the fifties the mistaken impres- 
T sion must not be formed that the people of the United 

open up the States at this time talked and thought of little else. 
West. q^j^g development of the ever-receding frontier in the 

West was a matter of general concern. We have seen how the central 



QUARREL OVER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 337 

government in the first half of the century refused any considerable 
aid to pubHc improvements, and how the states themselves went 
heavily into the work, only to repent later of their policy. Congress 
began to change its course slowly after 1848, not at first by constructing 
public improvements itself but by giving its aid to the states, with the 
requirement that the states in turn assist the private companies 
engaged in the improvements. Under the "land grant railroad 
policy" of the general government 2,600,000 acres were voted in 1850 
to Illinois for the Illinois Central Railroad and large amounts to other 
states to build the Mobile and Ohio Railroad. In the next fifteen years 
20,000,000 acres of public lands were disposed of in the interests of 
western railroads. Other laws bestowed on the states thousands of 
acres of "swamp lands" and "saline lands," to be used as the states 
might direct; and four different acts bestowed 50,000,000 acres of 
military bounty lands on old soldiers. 

In the decade from 1850 to i860 the total value of all farm property, 
which in 1850 was $3,900,000,000, doubled; the annual cotton crop, 
which amounted to 2,100,000 bales in 1850, almost dou'bled Agricultural 
in the same interval, while the annual corn crop of 590,- statistics. 
000,000 bushels and that of wheat, which reached 100,000,000 
bushels in 1850, increased approximately fifty per cent. 

Railroad construction went on in every section. In all the United 
States from 1850 to i860, 20,000 miles of railroad were constructed, or 
four times as many miles as in the previous decade. R^pj^j 
Among the new western roads were the Illinois Central, railroad 
the Mobile and Ohio, the Chicago and Northwestern, co"«t'-"<^««°- 
the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy, and many others, all richly 
endowed with the government lands. The trunk lines from the east 
were at the same time making their way over the Appalachian Moun- 
tains in their progress westward, the Erie from New York to Buffalo, 
the New York Central from New York to Chicago, the Pennsylvania 
from Philadelphia to Chicago, and the Baltimore and Ohio from Bal- 
timore to Cincinnati and St. Louis. 

The growth of the western cities was magical. Chicago, which had 
been founded as a fort in the Indian country in 1804, was in 1833 still 
a small village of one hundred and fifty wooden houses. 
In the next five years, as a result of the prosperous times of Chicago 
of Andrew Jackson, its population rose to 4000; but its ^^d New 
shipments of grain in 1838 amounted to only 78 bushels of 
wheat. By i860 it numbered 109,000 inhabitants, and in this year over 
the new lines of transportation which were opening up, by lakes, canals, 
and railroads, it shipped 11,000,000 bushels of wheat. This phenome- 



338 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

nal advance was an index of the growth of the entire Northwest, for 
which Chicago was the natural receiving and distributing center. New 
York City profited by the new methods of communication with the 
West and increased rapidly in wealth and population; her 300,000 in- 
habitants in 1840 had increased to 800,000 in i860. The total popu- 
lation of the United States rose from 17,000,000 in 1840 to 23,000,000 
in 1850 and 31,000,000 in i860. 

The development of the country's mineral resources kept pace with 
the general progress. In 1810 the average annual production of gold 
The progress was $2ooo, in 1820 $73,000, in 1830 $564,000, in 1840 
of mining. $i,ooo,ooo, and in 1850, two years after the opening of the 
California mines, $50,000,000. In the decade from 1850 to 1S60 the 
annual production of gold averaged $55,000,000. This large addition to 
the wealth of the country worked mightily for prosperity. Silver pro- 
duction was inconsiderable. From 1850 to i860 the annual production 
of coal and of pig iron, both excellent indices of general prosperity, 
especially along manufacturing lines, advanced, the one from 6,000,000 
tons to 13,000,000 tons, and the other from 560,000 to 820,000 tons. 

Agricultural development, the building of new railroads and cities, 
and the progress in the mining industries created an unusual demand for 

. ^ laborers, which in turn induced an increase in immigration. 

Immigration. ' .T.i-r,^ 

Failure of the potato crop m Ireland m 1846, stern repres- 
sion of political revolution in the German states in 1848, and wars and 
upheavals in other parts of the continent of Europe contributed to the 
movement. In 1820, 8000 immigrants arrived from Europe, 23,000 
came in 1830, 84,000 in 1840, and 370,000 in 1850. Each year of the 
fifties saw an increase, until in 1854 the number reached 425,000. In 
the decade 1850-1860, 2,700,000 immigrants, mostly Irish, Germans, 
and English, entered the United States, the Irish generally settling in 
the manufacturing centers of the East or seeking work on the canals 
and railroads, and the Germans and the EngHsh finding their way to 
the agricultural sections of the Middle West. Almost all the new- 
comers cast their fortunes with the Northern States, for to the inde- 
pendent artisans and laborers of Europe competition with enforced black 
labor was unattractive. 

The movement was a continuation of that by w^hich the country 
had been built up from the beginning. Except the Indians, all the 
Opposition inhabitants of the United States are immigrants or the 
to immigra- descendants of immigrants. History shows, however, 
^°^' that after men have arrived in the new country and have 

enjoyed its freedom and opportunity for a number of years, they fre- 
quently object to others coming to enjoy the same privileges. The 



QUARREL 0\'ER SLAVERY IN THE TERRITORIES 339 

riots against the immigrants in Andrew Jackson's time illustrate this 
fact, and from 1 8 50 to 1S60 fresh riots disclose the same tendency. The 
anti-foreigners went so far as to form the Know-Nothing party, which, 
as we have seen, placed a presidential candidate in the field in 1856. 
The party won a few local and state elections and then died. The 
sober second thought of the nation revolted at the idea of organized 
opposition to immigration. The moral question of slavery was a more 
substantial issue on which to found a political party. 

The swelling tide of prosperity which set in during the forties con- 
tinued up to within a few weeks after President Buchanan took his 
seat, and then suddenly receded in the financial panic of The financial 
1857. Thousands lost their fortunes and other thousands p^'"*^ °^ ^^^''• 
their work. It was the panic of 1837 over again on a somewhat smaller 
scale, brought about by the same general set of causes. In their 
prosperity and in the abundance of money after the discoveries of gold 
in California, men had speculated too heavily in public lands, in rail- 
roads, in city real estate, in mineral-bearing lands, and in many other 
lines of investment. They had gone too far and the inevitable crash 
overtook them. 

While the people were gradually recovering from the effects of this 
panic, providential discoveries of new mineral deposits brought 
encouragement to the whole nation. Petroleum or crude The discovery 
oil was found in a drilled well at Titusville, Pennsylvania, °* petroleum, 
in 1859. The first well was not a flowing well, but the oil was pumped 
from it at the rate of twenty-five barrels per day, which was equal to 
a daily income of $1000. Soon the Funk well, the first flowing well, 
was struck. "Funk was a poor man when the well was struck. It 
was struck in June, 1861, and commenced flowing to the astonishment 
of all oil borers in the neighborhood at the rate of two hundred and 
fifty barrels per day. Such a prodigal supply upset all calculations, 
and it was confidently predicted that it would cease. The oil, however, 
continued flowing with but little variation for fifteen months and then 
stopped, but not before Funk became a very rich man. Long before 
the Funk well had given out there were new sensations." 

Along Oil Creek in Pennsylvania, where the discoveries were made, 
Oil Creek, Franklin, Titusville, and other towns sprang up out of the 
wilderness, and fifty million gallons of oil were soon a great 
produced annually. Similar discoveries were made in industry, 
other parts of the country. It was through a monopoly of the petro- 
leum industry, built up by the Standard Oil Company, that the Rocke- 
feller fortune has been created, the largest private fortune in the world, 
amounting, according to one estimate, to $1,000,000,000. 



340 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

In the same year, 1859, there was discovered in Colorado the 
New gold and Gregory lode of gold, and in Nevada the famous Com- 
siiver mines, gtock lode, the latter an immensely rich vein of gold 
and silver, which in six years yielded $50,000,000. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Rhodes, United States, I-II; McMaster, United States, VIII; Allen Johnson, 
Stephen A. Douglas; Schurz, Henry Clay, II, 315-414; Harding, Orations, 267-291. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Underground Railroad. Epochs, VII, 110-115; W. H. Siebert, Under- 
ground Railroad; M. G. McDougal, Fugitive Slaves; Rhodes, United States, II, 74-77, 
and 361-365; Contemporaries, IV," 80-96. 

2. The Crime Against Kansas. \'illard, John Brown, 79-266; L. W. Spring, 
Kansas, 37-257; Old South Leaflets, IV, 83; Epochs, \ll, 164-168; Contemporaries, 
IV, 97-121; Sparks, Expansion, 351-365; Harding, Orations, 292-308. 

3. The Lincoln-Douglas Debates. Nicolay and YixY, Abraham Lincoln, II, 
135-170; G. H. Putnam, Ed., The Political Debates Between Abraham Lincoln and 
Stephen A. Douglas; Harding, Orations, 309-341; Old South Leaflets, IV, 85; Rhodes, 
United Slates, II, 320-338. 

ILLUSTRATIVE I\IATERL\L 

Longfellow, Poems on Slavery; Lowell, Stanzas on Freedom {Wendell Phillips, 
To William Lloyd Garrison, and On the Capture of Fugitive Slaves near Washington); 
Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin; Whittier, Ichabod, Stanzas for the Times — i8§o, and 
A Sabbath Scene; G. W. Bagby, The Old Virginia Gentleman and Other Sketches. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Why was California's application for statehood called "impertinent " ? Trace the 
part of Henry Clay in each presidential contest from 1824 to 1848. Were Clay and 
Webster right in pushing the Compromise of 1850? State the difference between 
nullification in South Carolina and the personal liberty laws of the Northern States. 
Why was the \^'hig party a failure? Why did the Know-Nothing party fail? Give 
the causes for the failure of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Explain why the Dred Scott 
Decision was incompatible with popular sovereignty. Whj' was it a mistake for the 
Supreme Court to pass on the question of territorial slavery? Why was the Ostend 
Manifesto an aifront to Spain? Ought Fillmore to have refused to sign the fugitive 
slave bill? Pierce the Kansas-Nebraska bill? and Buchanan to have refused to send the 
Lecompton Constitution to Congress? How do you account for the wave of economic 
prosperity that swept the country after the Mexican War down to 1857? What were 
the leading issues before the people in the presidential campaigns of 1852 and 1856 ? 



CHAPTER XXII 
SECESSION 

JOHN BROWN'S RAID 

On Sunday night, the sixteenth of October, 1859, John Brown, the 
anti-slavery leader of Kansas, backed by the support of New England 
sympathizers, led a band of twenty-two men across the john 
Potomac River from the Maryland shore to Harper's Ferry, ' ®r°,^"'if 
Virginia, and made a daring but unsuccessful attempt to per's Ferry, 
free the slaves of the surrounding region. Four of the Virginia, 
inhabitants of the town and ten of the raiders were killed in the ensuing 
encounter and Brown himself and six of his confederates were arrested, 
while five others made their escape. Not a slave left his master to join 
the would-be deliverers. 

Greater excitement has seldom stirred the nation, both North and 
South, than that which flamed forth the instant this startling intelli- 
gence spread over the country. In the North anti-slavery Brown's 
enthusiasm was carried almost to the point of fanaticism, °^° defense. 
as Brown's words in defense of his acts were reported. As he lay 
with wounds gaping and bleeding, he said to a newspaper reporter: "I 
hold that the Golden Rule ' Do unto others as you would that others 
should do unto you ' applies to all that would help others to gain their 
liberty. ... I want you to understand that I respect the rights of the 
poorest and weakest of the colored people oppressed by the slave sys- 
tem, just as much as I do those of the most wealthy and powerful. . . . 
I wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you people at the 
South, prepare yourselves for a settlement of this question that must 
come up for settlement sooner than you are prepared for it. The 
sooner you are prepared the better. You may dispose of me very easily. 
I am nearly disposed of now; but this question is still to be settled, 
this negro question, I mean; the end of that is not yet." 

The South, roused to more ardent defense of its system, denounced 
Brown as worse than murderer, as one who would incite the slaves to 
insurrection and expose the whites to the horrors of a His 
servile war. He was charged with treason and conspir- punishment, 
ing with others to rebel, and murder in the first degree, and after an 
exciting trial at Charlestown, Virginia, he was found guilty and hanged. 

341 



342 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

The opponents of slavery rallied to the standard of Harriet Beecher 
Stowe and John Brown, and attacked slavery with unsparing vigor. 
ArRuments ^^^ revolting features were held up to public condemnation 
against as never before. Now it was the barbarity of the punish- 

savery. ment of offending slaves that was attacked, now the 

inhumanity of the slave auction, the separation of families, the brutal 
hunt for the runaway, and the cruelties and illegalities of the foreign 
slave trade, which was still openly carried on in defiance of the law. 
Such descriptions of a slave ship from Africa as the following depicted 
conditions against which humanity revolted. "The scene between 
decks was revolting. Stowed in sitting posture, with their knees drawn 
up close to their breasts, were over five hundred human beings, whose 
skin was black, mostly children and young persons, and some women. 
So close were they packed that they could not move, and could hardly 
breathe." 

The Southerners pointed out the fairer aspects of the system, how 
the negroes in slavery were more civilized and Christianized than were 
The defense their brethren in the wilds of Africa, how they were 
of slavery. cared for by their masters and were generally satisfied with 
their lot; how, though naturally prone to laziness and theft, they were 
forced by slavery into useful industrial occupations, to which otherwise 
they would not submit; how the New Testament enjoined upon 
slaves obedience to their masters; and how the very prosperity of the 
Southern States was bound up with slavery as an economic necessity. 
Whereas in the early days of the republic many of the "Fathers," 
even in the South, had deplored the institution of slavery, although 
seeing no practical way of dispensing with it, the generation of South- 
erners of i860 defended it with ardor upon both moral and economic 
grounds. 

An influential book, "The Impending Crisis in the South, How to 
Meet It," written by Hinton Rowan Helper, a poor white of North 
Helper's Carolina, made a startling comparison of the economic 

"Impending results of slavery and of freedom. The Southern States 
^"^'^- were shown to be even farther behind the states of the 

North in industries and commerce than in 1832, and "the causes which 
have impeded the progress and prosperity of the South . . . may 
be traced to a common source — slavery." An illustration shows the 
drift of the argument. Helper stated that when the first census was 
taken in 1790, New York had a population of 340,000 and Virginia 
740,000, while sixty years later New York numbered 3,000,000 and Vir- 
ginia 1,400,000. In 1 79 1 the exports of the northern state equaled 
$2,500,000 and those of the southern state $3,100,000; in 1852 



SECESSION 343 

those of the former state amounted to $87,000,000 and those of the 
latter to $2,700,000. Although in the earlier year the imports of the 
two states were about equal, those of the northern state in 1853 
reached $178,000,000 and those of Virginia only $400,000. The prod- 
ucts of mining, manufacturing, and of the mechanic arts in the one 
case were valued in 1850 at $237,000,000 and in the other at $37,000,- 
000; in the same year the real and personal property in Virginia, 
excluding slaves, was slightly over $390,000,000, and in New York, 
where there were no slaves, $1,080,000,000. New York City alone 
was worth more than the whole state of Virginia. 

Helper called upon the non-slaveholding whites of the South to unite 
in a political party of their own and to work for the definite abolition 
of the system, which so retarded their section. "And His call for 
now, sirs, we have thus laid down our ultimatum. What the abolition 
are you going to do about it? Something dreadful, of ° savery. 
course! Perhaps you will dissolve the Union again. Do it, if you 
dare! Our motto, and we would have you to understand it, is 'the 
abolition of slavery and the perpetuation of the American union.' If 
by any means you do succeed in your treasonable attempts to take 
the South out of the Union to-day, we will bring her back to-morrow." 

With the written indorsement of sixty-eight Congressmen of the 
new Republican party, this book was circulated as a political campaign 
document by the Republicans in the state campaigns The influence 
of 1859. It aroused such fiery opposition among the of the book. 
Democrats that in the House of Representatives in Washington the 
choice of the Speaker in 1859-1860 hinged upon indorsement or 
non-indorsement of the book. 

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1860 

Swayed by the undying debate over slavery, the country again 
faced the necessity of electing a President. The leading question in 
dispute between the two parties was still how to deal with -j-j^^ 
slavery in the territories. On this point the Democratic Democratic 
party split into two irreconcilable factions, the extreme °^^^^ io°- 
southern faction on the one hand, which stood firmly for the principle 
of the Dred Scott Decision that slavery went into the territories with 
the Constitution, and the followers of Stephen A. Douglas on the other, 
who favored allowing the people in the territories themselves to decide 
whether or not they would have slavery. After the regular Demo- 
cratic convention of the year had broken up in a bitter quarrel, the 
southern faction named for President John C. Breckinridge of Ken- 
tucky, while the other faction gave their nomination to Douglas. 



344 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

The split greatly elated the Republicans, who came together in a 
harmonious convention, nominated Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, and 
^j^g declared again as in 1856 for the Missouri Compromise 

Republican plan of congressional control of slavery in the territories. 
Convention. j^ ^^^ generally recognized that William H. Seward of 
New York deserved the Republican nomination, but he was passed 
over, as he had been four years earlier, for the reason that his promi- 
nence had brought him too many enemies to lead a cause which de- 
pended for its success upon winning new recruits. To the enunciation 
of the "higher law," which, from the moment Seward first gave utter- 
ance to it in 1850, had been constantly gaining adherents, he had added 
that of the "irrepressible conflict," shortly after the Lecompton struggle 
in Congress. By this phrase he meant that the contest between slavery 
and freedom was bound to go on till the nation was all free or all slave. 
This also was the position of Lincoln in his address to the Republican 
state convention of Illinois that nominated him for Senator against 
Douglas. '"A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe 
this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. 
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house 
to fall — but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become 
all one thing or all the other." 

A fourth party, known as the Constitutional Union party, the dis- 
The Consti- tinguishing characteristic of which was its refusal to 
tutionai commit itself on the great question of the day, nominated 

Union party. ^^^^ g^j^ ^^ Tennessee. 

So far as slavery itself was concerned, the campaign debate cen- 
tered about the principles of the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas- 
The threat Nebraska Act, and the Dred Scott Decision; but the most 
of secession, exciting phase of the issue concerned secession from the 
Union and the formation of a separate southern republic, which the 
Southerners threatened to carry out if a Black Republican should be 
elected President. 

The reasons for such a radical step were many. The Southerners 
avowed that a victory of the party, the leaders of which denounced 
Arguments slavery as "a relic of barbarism" and stood for the prin- 
for secession, ciples of the "higher law," the "irrepressible conflict," 
and the "house divided against itself," would inevitably lead to 
more personal liberty laws, more open repudiation of the Dred Scott 
Decision, more attempts to exclude slavery from the territories, and 
more John Brown raids, until the existence of slavery even in the 
states would be threatened and the great agricultural interests de- 
pendent upon it be endangered. When it is realized that the crops 



SECESSION 345 

of cotton, tobacco, and sugar were intimately connected with the 
institution of slavery, that the prices of these crops were high and 
constantly advancing, and that the exportations of cotton alone consti- 
tuted in value almost one-third of the total exports of the entire country 
in i860, the force of the argument is easily perceived. At Virginia 
prices, the value of the four million slaves of the South was estimated 
at $2,800,000,000. To save this vast investment and to render the 
staple crops secure, was, in the minds of many Southerners, a com- 
mercial necessity, exceeding in importance the perpetuation of any 
political union. A constitutional basis for secession was furnished 
by the strict construction arguments of the Virginia and Kentucky 
Resolutions, as elaborated by Calhoun. 

The Southerners believed that there could be no doubt of the success- 
ful accomplishment of secession. In the first place, they were confident 
that Great Britain, where hundreds of cotton mills were ^j^^ jjopes of 
dependent on American cotton, would assist the new repub- the seces- 
lic, in order to make sure of its usual supply of this raw ^'"""^ ^' 
material. In the second place, they counted on receiving aid from their 
fellow-Democrats in the Northern States. 
In the third place, they believed that aid 
would come to them from the slaveholders 
of the Border States, out of devotion to the 
common cause of slavery. In the fourth 
place, they had a faint hope that the states 
of the Northwest were still sufficiently de- 
pendent on the mouth of the Mississippi 
River as an outlet to a market, to follow 
the section which controlled the mouth of 
that river into secession. 

Northerners piled up arguments against Sources of English Cotton 
Y 1 ^ ^ 1 1 • 1 Imports in i860 

secession, though the temper on both sides 

soon reached such a heat that argument counted for little. They 
pointed out, like Clay and Webster before them, that se- Arguments 
cession would plunge the country into civil war. They against 
prophesied that as soon as the first blows were struck, the 
northern sympathizers with the South would be swept off their feet in 
the prevailing enthusiasm for the Union, and that it was a delusion 
for the Southerners to look for much help in that quarter. They at- 
tempted to show to their Southern brethren that a government built 
up on the principle of secession would not rest on an enduring foun- 
dation, since the time might come when it would lose its own states, 
one after another, by the same disintegrating process. What right. 




346 TERRITORIAI. EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

they asked, had Louisiana and Florida to secede, brought into the 
Union by the common treasure? What right had Texas, secured to 
the Union by the blood of the soldiers of every state? The constitu- 
tionality of secession was denied in toto. 

As a result of the balloting in November, the country gave 1,860,000 
votes to Lincoln, 1,376,000 to Douglas, 850,000 to Breckinridge, and 
Lincoln 590,000 to Bell. In the electoral colleges there were 180 

elected. votes for Lincoln, 12 for Douglas, 39 for Bell, and 72 for 

Breckinridge. 

THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA 

The South began at once to carry out its threat. As in 1832 in the 
less serious controversy with the central government over the tariff, 
Theseces- ''Brave little South Carolina" led the way, followed in 
sion of South order, before President Lincoln's inauguration, by Missis- 
December sippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. 
20, I860. South Carolina's ordinance of secession, December 20, 

i860, was brief. "An Ordinance to dissolve the Union between the 
state of South Carolina and the other states united with her under the 
compact entitled 'The Constitution of the United States of America': 
We the people of the state of South Carolina, in convention assembled, 
do declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, that the 
Ordinance adopted by us in convention on the twenty-third day of 
May, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty- 
eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States was ratified, and 
also all acts and parts of acts of the general assembly of this state 
ratifying amendments of the said Constitution, are hereby repealed; 
and that the union now subsisting between South Carolina and other 
states under the name of the 'United States of America' is hereby 
dissolved." The ordinances of secession in other states were similar 
to that of South Carolina. 

Delegates from the first six states to secede, joined in a few days 
by delegates from Texas, assembled in convention in Montgomery, 
The Confed- Alabama, February 4, 1861, and in the remarkably short 
erate States space of four days adopted a Provisional Constitution, 
of America. ^^^ ^^ March II a Permanent Constitution for the 
Confederate States of America. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was 
chosen the first President of the new Confederacy, under the Provisional 
Constitution, and Alexander H. Stephens of Georgia the first Vice 
President. Among the strongest members of the Southern cabinet 
were Judah P. Benjamin of Louisiana, who at different times held the 
posts of Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State, 



SECESSION 347 

C. G. Memminger of South Carolina, Secretary of the Treasury, and 
John H. Reagan of Texas, the Postmaster General. The temporary 
capital of the Confederacy was at Montgomery, Alabama, but the 
permanent capital was later located at Richmond, Virginia. 

The Constitution of the Confederate States is an interesting docu- 
ment, both because it states plainly the Southern point of view on the 
political questions of its day, and because, with the sue- ^j^^ 
cesses and failures of the Constitution of the United States Confederate 
as a guide, it is in some respects superior to that document. 
Slavery was made lawful in every state and in the territories, internal 
improvements at the expense of the central government and a pro- 
tective tariff were forbidden, the doctrines of strict construction and 
states' rights was adopted, though the extreme steps of nuUification 
and secession went unnamed. The President was to serve for a single 
term of six years and, in addition to the ordinary veto power, was to 
have the power of vetoing items in appropriation bills; the members 
of his cabinet were to have the right to sit on the floor of the two houses 
of Congress and to take part in debate, though not to vote.' Each law 
was to relate to but one subject, that is, "riders" on appropriation bills 
were to be impossible. One of the final clauses contains the interest- 
ing provision, "The Confederate States may acquire new territory." 

Three weeks before South Carolina seceded. President Buchanan, 
in his annual message to Congress, made one of the best arguments 
against the right of secession which had ever been Buchanan's 
advanced, and ended with the impotent conclusion that, weakness in 
although secession was unconstitutional, the President, as 
chief executive officer of the country and the commander-in-chief of 
its military and naval forces, had no power to stop it. As state after 
state followed South Carolina, he took no action; when South Caro- 
lina fired on a government vessel, the Star of the West, which was 
sent to take provisions to the Union soldiers in Fort Sumter, in the 
harbor of Charleston, still held by the United States, he offered no 
resistance; and he retained in the cabinet certain Southerners, who 
were suspected of using their official position in aid of the South. At 
this juncture the union-loving men of the North sighed, "Oh! for an 
hour of Andrew Jackson!" Never was a President more glad to lay 
down the reins of office than was James Buchanan on March 4, 1861. 
The one note pleasing to northern sympathizers, amid all the discord 
of Buchanan's last days, was the message of the Secretary of the 
Treasury, John A. Dix, to a subordinate in New Orleans, "If any 
man attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the 
spot." 



348 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

As in the crises of 1820, 1832, and 1850, proposals of compromise 
were made to conciliate the disaffected sections. These plans were 
Compromise numbered by the score, but the one that received most 
proposed. attention was brought forward by Senator Crittenden of 

Kentucky, the successor of Henry Clay in the United States Senate. 
He proposed to amend the Constitution in the following respects: 
first, that the Missouri Compromise line of 36° 30' be restored and 
extended to California, all the territory north of the line to be free 
and all the territory south of it to be slave; second, that the United 
States guarantee to the slaveholders remuneration for fugitive slaves 
lost in the North; and third, that the United States formally renounce 
forever the right to interfere with slavery in the states. A peace 
conference of one hundred and thirty-three commissioners from 
twenty-three states, assembling in Washington with ex-President 
Tyler in the chair, proposed still other plans. Committees of the two 
houses of Congress set to work, and finally the Senate and the House of 
Representatives passed and transmitted to the states for ratification 
that part of the Crittenden proposals protecting slavery in the states 
from the action of the Federal government. By common agreement 
since 1789 the Federal government had uniformly refrained from all 
interference with slavery in the states, so that the new proposition did 
not involve any radical innovation; the measure merely sought to 
base on the more reliable foundation of a constitutional amendment 
that which till then had been a voluntary practice. Three northern 
states had given the amendment their approval, when war intervened 
to put an end to all measures of conciliation. 

The President-elect discouraged compromise. He believed that 

he and his party, at the outset of the new administration, ought not to 

desert the platform principle of territorial freedom on 

elect Lincoln which they had won the election. Such a change would 

opposes tend to bring the party into contempt as a party of no 

compromise. a f j r- r- j 

fixed principles, would alienate adherents, weaken the 
administration at the very time when it most needed support, and 
leave the way open to future strife over slavery in the territories. 
Lincoln wrote: "Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard 
to the extension of slavery. The instant you do they have us under 
again: all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over 
again. . . . Have none of it. The tug has to come, and better now 
than later." 

While Lincoln was thus leading his party against the delays and 
compromises of the Democrats, for it was mainly the northern Demo- 
crats who were engaged in bringing forward the conciliatory proposals, 




EXPLANATION 
Loyal 
Early Secession 
Later Secession 
Slave States 



[ I Free States 

[ I Territories, all open to Slavery 



Longitude 102 



SECESSION 349 

Jefferson Davis was leading the Southern States in their equally mo- 
mentous decision against compromise. Surely no Presi- president 
dent ever faced more important issues or met them more Davis opposes 
squarely than did Presidents Lincoln and Davis. compromise. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Rhodes, United Stales, II; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, II-III; Morse, 
Abraham Lincoln, I; F. Bancroft, William H. Seward, I; Harding, Orations, 342- 
357; FiTE, Presidential Campaign of i860. 

SPECE\L TOPICS 

1. John Brown, Old South Leaflets, IV, 84; Epochs, VII, 177-194; Fite, Presi- 
dential Campaign of i860, 1-32; Villard, John Brown; F. B. Sanborn, John Brown; 
Contemporaries, IV, 144-150; Hill, Decisive Battles, 65-106. 

2. Arguments for and against Slavery. Epochs, VI, 77-86; Fite, Presi- 
dential Campaign of i860, 33-91; Contemporaries, IV, 59-79. 

3. Arguments for and against Secession. Epochs, VIII, 14-17; Fite, Presi- 
dential Campaign of i860, 162-197; Contemporaries, IV, 164-179; Epochs, VIII, 14-17; 
Harding, Orations, 362-369. 

4. The Presidential Election of i860. Fite, Presidential Campaign of i860; 
Contemporaries, IV, 151-163; Epochs, VIII, 3-13; E. Stanwood, Presidency, 279-297; 
Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, II, 216-295. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

E. C. Stedman, How Old Brown Took Harper's Ferry; Whittier, Bro'wn of Ossa- 
watomie; Holmes, Brother Jonathan's Lament for Sister Caroline. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Give the moral, Biblical, and economic arguments for and against slavery. Why 
did the politicians of the Republican party judge that Lincoln would be a better leader 
in i860 than Seward? How did Stephen A. Douglas help elect Lincoln? What can 
you say in justification of the secession of the Southern States? Why were the Con- 
federates able to make their Constitution so quickly? Point out any respects in 
which the Confederate Constitution was superior to the Constitution of the United 
States. What were the leading issues in current politics before the people in the 
presidential campaign of i860? Why was the South alarmed over the election of a 
Republican President in i860? 



CHAPTER XXIII 
THE CIVIL WAR 



THE FIRST YEAR OF WAR, 1861 

The inaugural address of President Lincoln was awaited by the 
nation with intense interest. It was known that the new President 
Lincoln's ^^^ opposed to compromise and that he had openly- 

inaugural exerted his influence against such measures, but the 

country waited to see whether he would maintain that 
position with all it involved, when he took oflicial charge of the 

government, or would ofifer some 
compromise measures of his own 
to preserve the peace. The ad- 
dress proved to be a calm and dig- 
nified statement of the northern 
side of the dispute, with no sug- 
gestion of compromise. The 
President affirmed that he would 
not interfere with slavery in the 
states but that he would defend 
the forts and other property of the 
United States in the South and 
would collect the tariff. If there 
was a quarrel, he would not be the 
aggressor. ' ' In your hands, my dis- 
satisfied fellow-countrymen, and 
not in mine, is the momentous 
issue of civil war. The government 
will not assail you. You can have 
no conflict without being your- 
selves the aggressors. You have no 
oath registered in Heaven to de- 
stroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to 'pre- 
serve, protect, and defend it.'" 

Lincoln's cabinet was one of the strongest in the history of the gov- 
ernment, comparing favorably even with that of Washington in his first 

350 




Abraham Lincoln 



THE CIVIL WAR 



351 



administration. The President gave the leading places to his five 
rivals for the Republican presidential nomination the pre- ^^ i^- 
ceding year. William H. Seward, Senator from New York, of President 
became Secretary of State; Salmon P. Chase, ex-Senator ^^^°^- 
from Ohio and ex-Governor of that state, Secretary of the Treasury, 
Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, Secretary of War, succeeded within 
a year by Edwin M. Stanton of Pennsylvania; Edwin Bates of Mis- 
souri Attorney General, and Caleb Smith of Indiana Secretary of the 
Interior. The Navy Department went to Gideon Welles of Connec- 
ticut and the Post Office Department to Montgomery Blair of Mary- 
land. Bates and Blair from the conservative slave states served to 
represent that uncertain section of the Union. Though able and rep- 
resentative of the various sections of the country, the new cabinet 
proved to be an unruly one; but, Hke Washington, Lincoln proved 
himself the master of his headstrong advisers. 

The selections for the cabinet were made before inauguration day. 
After the inauguration came the difficult task of selecting the subordi- 
nate officials of the administration such as the foreign t., 

o ihe reorgam- 

ministers and consuls, the officials in the customs service, zation of the 
the United States marshals, the postmasters, and the "^' service, 
hosts of officials in the executive departments in Washington. Great 
care was necessary to. detect and exclude Southerners and Southern 
sympathizers, and to install in office only the unquestionably loyal. 
Under these extraordinary circumstances Lincoln made the cleanest 
sweep from office in the history of the country, not even excepting 
Jackson's celebrated "division of the spoils." The days of the present 
civil service reform were yet to come. 

The question of how to deal with the seceding states was soon pressed 
home on the new President. His stand against compromise was unal- 
terable; and in the inaugural address he had pledged xhe aue f 
himself not to use force on the Southern States if they of Fort 
remained within the law. Early in the history of the '^™*®'"- 
Federal government the state of South Carolina had ceded to the 
United States the island in Charleston harbor on which Fort Sumter 
was situated, and the officials of the state now took the position that 
under secession the island reverted to the state. South Carolina 
even endeavored to treat with the authorities at Washington as to 
the amount of money to be paid to the national government for the 
improvements on the island, including the fort. The Washington 
government, not recognizing that there could be such a thing as 
secession, would neither treat with the state nor give up the fort. 

Whether or not to attempt to send provisions to the United 



352 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



States garrison at Fort Sumter was a matter for immediate de- 
cision. Shots had been fired at the Star of the West, 
when the attempt had been made in the preceding 
administration, but now the soldiers were on the verge 
of starving. In the crisis many friends of the government favored 
withdrawing the men rather than bring war upon the nation. ''Let 



Whether or 
not to send 
provisions. 




Fort Sumter 



the erring sisters go in peace," they urged. Even some members 
of the cabinet favored this course, but Lincoln refused to make the 
humiliating withdrawal, nor would he desert his own soldiers. With 
full knowledge of the probable results of the step, he sent word to the 
Governor of South Carolina that he intended to send provisions into 
the fort but not men or military supplies. This step forced upon 
the South the responsibility of firing the first shot, if they chose to 
resist. 

With their speedily organized government behind them, the Con- 
federate States accepted the challenge. On Friday, April 12, 1861, at 
The war four-thirty in the morning, when the Federal fleet with 

begun. provisions was off the harbor of Charleston, the South- 

erners under orders from President Davis fired on Major Anderson 
and his Union garrison at Surnter to force them out before the pro- 
visions could be landed. The fort answered gallantly, but after more 
than thirty hours of continuous fighting, defense was hopeless and 
the garrison was compelled to surrender. Major Anderson and his 
men were allowed to give a last salute to their flag and to march out 
with all the honors of war, on Sunday, the fourteenth of April, and 
sail away to New York. The war had begun, though no blood was 
shed in the first encounter. 

The Confederacy had been engaged in raising troops for several 



THE CIVIL WAR 



353 




SCALE OF MILES 



weeks before Sumter was fired upon. On Monday morning, April 15, 
by a proclamation which resembled that of Washington when the lat- 
ter called out the militia to suppress the Whisky Insur- -pj^^ ^.^^j^ ^^ 
rection, Lincoln issued a call for seventy-five thousand both sides 
state militia to carry into execution the laws of the land. ° ^ ^ ' 
The dreadful excitement that now swept over both sections of the 
nation can be but faintly 
realized by the present 
generation. To avenge 
the insult to the national 
flag on the one hand, and 
on the other to defend 
even at the point of 
the sword their newly 
asserted right of self-gov- 
ernment, Northern and 
Southern patriots rushed 
forward to enlist, in the 
maddest passion that 
America had ever seen. 
Friends at home contrib- 
uted hundreds of thou- 
sands of dollars for the 
comfort of the volunteers and the support of their families, and in 
every village of the nation the young soldiers were "off to the 
wars." In the suspense the solemn reflection weighed on all, that 
fellow-citizens were arrayed against fellow-citizens, brothers against 
brothers. 

Party strife ceased in the North. Douglas, leader of the Northern 
Democrats, went to the White House in person to assure his old rival 
of his own support and that of his followers. The state Party spirit 
of Virginia, which till the first shots had been fired, had ^^^^ aside, 
refused to secede, was drawn into the Confederacy, and was followed 
shortly by three more states, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennes- 
see. Indeed to bring these conservative states into their fold had 
been one of the chief objects of the South in taking the responsibilitv 
of firing on the flag of the United States, even though it was feared 
that the accession of these states to their cause must be secured at 
the expense of losing friends in the states farther north. 

On the anniversary of the battle of Concord and Lexington, April 
19, one week after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, the first blood of 
the war was shed in the streets of Baltimore, Maryland. The sixth 



a H 1 

Fort Sumter and Charleston Harbor 



354 



TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



The first 

bloodshed, 

Baltimore, 

Maryland, 

AprU 19, 

1861. 



Massachusetts regiment, crossing the city on its way to Washington, 
was confronted by a crowd of Southern sympathizers and 
several lives were lost. Telegraph wires were cut, and 
railroad bridges and tracks were destroyed on the only 
route between Washington and the North. The capital 
was isolated for several days. At last several regiments 
from Massachusetts and New York, which had reached Annapolis 
by water, marched overland to Washington, and on April 25, rendered 
the capital safe. 

Lincoln's first call for troops was followed quickly by a call for 
The call for 42,000 volunteers for three years. Neither these troops, 
troops. however, nor the militia were ordered at once to march 

against the South. Delay was unavoidable. The first attention and 

energy of the President were 
necessarily given to the ques- 
tion of civil organization and 
appointments to office. The 
existence of a strong Southern 
sentiment in Baltimore and 
throughout the state of Mary- 
land rendered it necessary to 
secure thorough control of this 
region north of Washington 
before making a show of force 
against the states farther 
south. Lastly the green 
troops that had been gathered 
at the capital were sadly in 
need of discipline and training 
before they would be fit for 
active service. 

The weeks rolled by with 
no important engagement, and 
July 20 drew near, the date set 
for the meeting of the Confederate Congress in their permanent capi- 

„, _ . tal at Richmond, Virginia. "On to Richmond!" de- 

The Battle ^ ■,■,•■ -kt 1 u t c ^ 

ofBuURun, manded the impatient Northern press, the Southern 

Congress must not be allowed to meet;" and "On to 

Washington!" rang out the defiant cry from the South. 

On Sunday, July 21, the opposing forces of the two sections met at 

Manassas Junction near the httle creek of Bull Run in eastern Virginia. 

General McDowell, at the head of 30,000 Union men, attacked General 




SCALE OF MILES 



20 40 

Battle of Bull Run 



July 21, 
1861. 



THE CIVIL WAR 355 

Beauregard with a force of 23,000 Southerners. Both armies were 
green, both somewhat afraid to fight; but after an all-day struggle the 
Confederates won and the Northerners retreated to Washington, thirty 
miles away. If the Southerners had pursued them, they probably 
would have taken the Northern capital without much difficulty. 

While the first battle was a victory for the South, its effects at the 
North were beneficial rather than otherwise. Men were aroused to 
the seriousness of the task that had been undertaken The effect of 
and to a determination to fight the war to a successful *^® battle, 
finish. The South, on the other hand, was unduly elated at its suc- 
cess, and its troops returned in crowds to their homes in the belief 
that the war was over. 

Up to this time the general in command of the Northern forces 
was the aged veteran of two wars, Winfield Scott. He now retired, 
to give way to a younger man, George B. McClellan, who. General Mc- 
warned by the lack of discipline at Bull Run, devoted his successor f 
energies to organizing and drilling the soldiers in the General Scott 
vicinity of Washington. The new army, which was 0° th™u^on 
called the Army of the Potomac, was held back by its forces, 
commander from active offensive operations for almost a year. 

The task of the South, in the war to which the two sections were 
now committed, was less difificult than that of the Federal government. 
To maintain its independent status and repel invasion Military 
was its object, with incursions into the Northern ter- problems, 
ritory whenever this was possible. The North, on the other hand, was 
confronted with the necessity of invading and subjugating the entire 
Southern country. Its plan of aggressive campaign was fivefold: 
first, to capture Richmond; second, to hold the Border States to loyalty; 
third, to maintain a blockade of the Southern ports; fourth, to push 
back the Southern line of defense, which at the beginning stretched 
from Virginia across Kentucky and Tennessee to the Mississippi 
and beyond; and, fifth, to gain possession of the Mississippi and 
thus cut the Confederacy into two parts. The North must at the 
same time repel invasion of her own territory and protect the capital 
at Washington. 

In May and June of 1861, the first year of the war, while the Wash- 
ington government was fastening its hold on Maryland preparatory 
to its invasion of Virginia, the two sides were struggling Missouri's 
for the possession of the Border States of Missouri and stand for 
Kentucky, and for the western part of Virginia, which *^« ^^^o'*- 
had stood out against secession. The governors of Missouri and 
Kentucky indignantly refused Lincoln's call for mihtia; in Missouri 



356 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

serious fighting was required to save the state to the Union, and it 
was the loyalty of the large number of freedom-loving German 
immigrants in the state that turned the scales. The Union forces in 
Missouri were under the immediate command of General Nathaniel 
Lyon and General Francis P. Blair. 

Kentucky, though torn by dissension, decided for the Union without 
serious fighting, while the western part of Virginia was won away 
Kentucky and from the Richmond government by the success in several 
West Virginia small engagements of Captain, later General McClellan, 
the United whose achievements here paved the way for his promo- 
States, ^[q^ ^q ^}^g place of General Scott. The West Virginians 
remained loyal, and in 1863 they were admitted into the Union as a 
separate state. The formation of this state was a war measure, for 
which, strictly speaking, there was no constitutional warrant; in fact, 
the Constitution explicitly says, "No new state shall be formed or 
erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be 
formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without 
the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of 
the Congress." 

The agricultural South, with little manufacturing, was obliged to 

depend on outside countries for most of its manufactured products, and 

President Lincoln instituted a blockade of their ports to 

ade of the shut off the possibility of further importations reaching 

ports of the them from the ocean. The task was a tremendous one. 
Confederacy. . . 

nothmg less than the patrol of thousands of miles of coast 

and of countless entrances to harbors, rivers, and inlets. In the first 

days it was necessarily a mere paper blockade at many points, but 

hundreds of ships gradually took up the seemingly impossible task, and 

as the number of blockade runners breaking through grew less and less, 

it was evident that the blow dealt the Confederacy by the blockade 

was a powerful one. 

There was nevertheless some question as to the wisdom of the 

blockade. To institute it was in itself an act of war, a recognition that 

Questions those against whom it was declared had the right to per- 

raised by the form similar acts of war and were therefore belligerents, 

regularly clothed with the right to wage war. According 

to the international law of the time there were three views that might 

be taken of the status of the Southerners. They might be regarded 

as rebellious subjects with no international standing whatsoever, 

whom the sovereign government of the United States was bound to 

reduce to allegiance. For rebellious subjects to "wage war" was 

an impossibility; all their acts of violence were mere lawless acts 



THE CIVIL WAR 357 

against their lawful government. To the end of the war it was the 
contention of President Lincoln and his government that the Con- 
federates were in this class, that is, mere rebels. President Davis 
and his followers placed the Confederacy upon higher ground. They 
aspired to the highest possible station, and declared themselves to be 
an independent nation. No other nation accorded them this rank. 
There was a third grade of international relationship, midway between 
rebellion and independence, into which the Southerners might be placed, 
and this was belligerency. Parties in arms, whose belligerency or 
right to wage war has been recognized, have achieved the first step 
toward independence. Their acts of violence are no longer mere acts 
of lawlessness, but acts of war; they have the right to equip armies and 
ships of war, and in their struggle for independence, but in this only, 
they may behave themselves like an independent nation. 

Great Britain refused to regard the Confederates as the rebellious 
subjects of the United States, nor would she go so far as to recognize 
the Southerners as independent. She chose the middle Great Brit- 
course of recognizing them as belligerents, alleging that ?^^^.^^^ *^® 
the United States herself had substantially taken the same of the 
ground by the declaration of the blockade. The conditions Confederacy, 
which, by international law, must exist in a rebellious state prior to a 
recognition of her belligerency, certainly existed in the Confederacy. 
These are, first, that the insurgents be not a mere band of marauders, 
but seekers after a political end; second, that they carry on war accord- 
ing to the rules of civilized warfare; third, that the extent of the revolt 
be such as to render the issue at least doubtful; and fourth, that the 
rebels be under a responsible governmental organization. 

Despite the justification of the British, the "unfriendly haste" of 

their recognition of the belligerency of the Confederacy ^ ,. . 

was greatly resented in the United States, and consti- relations be- 

tuted the first in a series of events which embittered the u^ted^States 

relations of the United States and Great Britain through- and Great 

^ ^1 Britain, 

out the war. 

The United States herself in other ways practically recognized the 

belligerent rights of the Confederacy, for example, by the exchange 

of prisoners. Such an exchange with mere rebels would The attitude 

have been impossible. Theoretically, however, in the of the United 

view of the Northern government the Southerners to the theory and 

end remained citizens of the United States in rebellion "^ practice. 

against their lawful government. 



358 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

A YEAR OF UNCERTAINTY, 1862 . 

By a rapid succession of events beginning early in 1862 the North- 
ern soldiers and sailors pushed the Confederate lines in the western 
Pushing arena of war farther and farther to the south. In Febru- 

back tne ary Commander Foote ascended the Tennessee River with 

Unes in the gunboats and captured Fort Henry, and ten days later 
West. General U. S. Grant with a land force seized Fort Donelson 

on the Cumberland and took 15,000 prisoners. At this fort General 




SCALE OF MILES 



Operations in the West 



Grant sent his famous dispatch to the Southerners, ''No terms except 
an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted," which 
won for him the popular title, "Unconditional Surrender" Grant. 
Two important waterways were thus opened to the heart of the 
Confederacy, and the Northerners proceeded to take advantage of 
the situation. General Grant pushed on with his forces up the Ten- 
nessee River to Shiloh in western Tennessee, and on April 6 and 7, with 
desperate fighting, during which 25,000 men from the two sides were 
left dead or wounded on the battle field, drove the Confederates 
into northern Mississippi. The Southern lines rallied at Corinth, but 
Grant broke through and compelled them to retreat farther into the 
South. 

An attempt to carry the Confederate flag back toward the North was 



THE CIVIL WAR 



359 



made late in the same year, when General Bragg with 30,000 soldiers 
struck north through Chattanooga by railroad to a point Repulse of 
near Louisville, Kentucky, even Cincinnati being reached ^^^ Confed- 
by a small band. Bragg was obliged, however, to face vance into 
the Federal soldiers at Perryville, Kentucky, where he Kentucky, 
was defeated, and again at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, where he was 
so badly shattered by the Union forces that he abandoned his attempt 
and remained quietly at Chattanooga for several months. 

Closely following the seizures of Forts Henry and Donelson, the 
capture of Island Number 10 in the Mississippi River by the Union 
forces and the abandonment by the Confederates of Fort Seizing the 
Pillow and the city of Memphis effectively completed the Mississippi, 
opening of the Mississippi as far south as Vicksburg. 

From the south the river was opened to the forces of the Union as 
far north as Port Hudson, a little less than two hundred miles south 
of Vicksburg, by the capture of the South's greatest city ^j^^ capture 
and seaport. New Orleans. The commander of the of New 
victorious expedition against this city was Captain, or ^ *^°^" 
after this victory. Rear Admiral, Farragut, who as a boy had fought 
in the navy against the British in the 
War of 181 2; and with him was the 
young Lieutenant George Dewey, who 
won the battle of Manila Bay in the 
Spanish War in 1898. Several forts 
were scattered along the river below 
New Orleans, while heavy iron chains 
stretched from bank to bank and a 
fleet of gunboats stood on guard. All 
these the Northern fleet passed and 
took the city. The closing of the mouth 
of the river was of material assistance 
in the enforcement of the blockade, 
and left the control of that interior 
waterway in Federal hands with the 
exception of the stretch between Port Hudson and Vicksburg. 

The spring campaign in the East in 1862 opened with the same 
success for the Northern arms. On the sea at Hampton Roads, off 
the coast of Virginia, for the first time in history two . 

ironclad ships, the Northern Monitor and the Southern and the 
Merrimac, engaged each other. On the day previous, the Memmac 
Merrimac, which was a wooden ship captured from the 
United States at the outbreak of hostilities, now newly clad in iron 




Capture of New Orleans 



36o TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

and renamed the Virginia, had destroyed the wooden Union ships, 
the Congress and the Cumberland, and had disabled the Minnesota. 
Such exploits, if continued, would have accomplished the raising of the 
blockade. The North was afraid, too, that the new vessel might sweep 




Ericsson's Monitor. Side Elevation 

on victoriously to Washington, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, 
and by her exploits win for the Confederacy foreign recognition of its 
independence as a separate nation. The Monitor arrived upon the 
scene at the critical moment. Its inventor, Ericsson, had conceived 
the idea of an ironclad vessel with a revolving turret, able to deliver 




The Monitor and the Merrimac 



shots in any direction without shifting the position of the boat. This 
strange craft, "the Yankee cheese-box on a raft," steamed up to her 
overtowering antagonist and so far damaged her that the latter re- 
tired and refused further combat. Ironclad boats were not entirely 
new, for they had been used in the Crimean War in Europe, 1854-1856, 
but with the duel between the Monitor and the Merrimac the era of 
ironclads, which were destined to revolutionize naval warfare the 
world over, was fairly inaugurated. 



THE CIVIL WAR 



361 



In the peninsular campaign in Virginia, which soon followed, the 

South scored a victory. The Confederate capital was protected on 

the north by rivers, streams, and an almost impassable ^^ , ., 

., , ■' . ' 1 A T ^1 11 1 -111 The failure 

Wilderness, so that General McCleilan determmed to ianci of McCleilan 

his troops at the end of the peninsula between the York Richmond 

and James Rivers and march on Richmond from the south. 

He arrived at the peninsula at the head of a well-drilled army of 100,000 

men, but was unable to 



reach Richmond. He took 
Yorktown, where Cornwallis 
had surrendered in the War 
of Independence, then Wil- 
liamsburg, and pushing 
north by hard fighting came 
within sight of the church 
spires of the Confederate 
capital. He sent word to 
President Lincoln to send 
him every available man, 
and received the promise of 
McDowell's army, which 
was defending Washington. 
Just then, however, Stone- 
wall Jackson dashed down 
the Shenandoah Valley, at 
the head of a Confederate 
cavalry force, driving out 
General Banks at the head 
of a Union force and creat- 
ing alarm for the safety of 
the Federal capital. Mc- 
Dowell's forces were sent 
into the Shenandoah Valley 
against Jackson, while Jack- 
son himself quickly joined 
Lee at Richmond in time to 
aid him against McCleilan 




SCALE OF MILES 



McClellan's Peninsular Campaign 



The latter, after seven days of almost 
continuous fighting, withdrew to Harrison's Landing on the James 
River, whence gunboats conveyed his troops back to Washington. 

The North was chagrined that its forces had failed before Richmond. 
Various charges were made against McCleilan, that he was too cow- 
ardly to fight, that his heart was not in the cause, and that he had 



362 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



tion with 
McClellan. 



no desire to submit his brother Democrats of the South to humiliating 
Dissatisfac- conquest. In his defense it was asserted that it was the 
rains and swamps that had turned him back. Some 
palliated his lack of achievement, declaring that politics 
in Washington had much to do with his inactivity, and that he was not 

left free by the national admin- 

istration to take such action as 
he desired. Certain it is that 
he was baffled, and in the opin- 
ion of many only by the gen- 
ius of the Confederate leader, 
General Robert E. Lee, who is 
ranked with General Grant 
among the country's greatest 
military commanders. 

McClellan was relieved of the 
command of the Army of the Po- 
Northern tomacandhis troops 

discourage- assigned to the de- 
fense of Washington , 
while the other Union soldiers in 
eastern Virginia were consoli- 
dated into the Army of Virginia, 
under General Pope, the victor 
at Island Number 10 in the West. 
Having rendered his capital safe 
for the moment, Lee ventured 
away toward Washington and 
the North. His able general, 
Stonewall Jackson, defeated a 
part of the Union forces at Cedar 
Mountain, and Lee worsted Pope 
at the Second Battle of Bull Run. 
The latter was then relieved of command and McClellan was restored 
to the head of the Army of the Potomac. Lee pressed on into Mary- 
land in his first invasion of the North, but was turned back though 
not crushed by McClellan at Antietam, in one of the bloodiest bat- 
tles of the war. McClellan failed for some reason to cut off Lee's re- 
treat after Antietam, and December found the latter back again before 
Richmond. At Fredericksburg Lee dealt a crushing blow to the Fed- 
eral forces under Burnside, who had succeeded McClellan and was 
attempting to march on Richmond from the north. 




Vonjederaie • - ► - -^ 



SCAL E OF MILES 
i-0 



First Invasion of the North 



THE CIVIL WAR 363 

THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION 

President Lincoln at the outset of the war had disclaimed all inten- 
tion of interfering with slavery in the states, and had announced that 
the sole purpose of the war was to save the Union. Con- ^j^^ original 
gress displayed the same spirit in resolutions passed purpose of 
immediately after the defeat at Bull Run, which declared ^ ^^* 
that "this war is not waged ... in any spirit of oppression, or for 
any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or 
interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states, 
but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to 
preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the 
several states unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accom- 
plished the war ought to cease." "The Union forever," was one of the 
first and most popular songs of the Northern soldiers. 

Yet an even more popular song ran, "John Brown's body lies 
a-moldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on." Should 
those men and women for whom John Brown died be x^e growth 
delivered up again to slavery, when they escaped into the 9^ sentiment 
Northern lines? Thousands of blacks in the first year of emancipa- 
the war came for protection to General Benjamin F. *^°°- 
Butler, the Union commander at Fortress Monroe in Virginia, and to 
their masters who came within his lines to claim their property he 
refused to surrender the fugitives. Butler asserted that the blacks 
were contraband of war, that is, property which by the law of war 
might be confiscated as being useful to the enemy. The theory that 
slaves were property was thus cleverly turned against the South. 

The radicals early besieged the President for an immediate procla- 
mation of emancipation, urging that while the Constitution gave him 
no power directly to take the step, he could yet do it by 
virtue of his military powers as commander-in-chief, as a for and 
military measure and for military reasons. Back in the against eman- 
thirties, when the House of Representatives was debat- 
ing the gag rule, John Quincy Adams had warned the South that the 
President of the United States would possess this power over their 
slaves if the country ever fell into civil war. General Fremont in 
Missouri in 1861 and General Hunter in South Carolina in 1862 rashly 
issued proclamations of their own, without the previous knowledge of 
the President, to free the slaves within their military districts; but their 
acts were promptly disavowed by Lincoln, who believed that if emanci- 
pation was to come, it should be uniform in its operation in all the 
opposing Southern States, and that such a uniform measure could 



364 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



come only from himself. Lincoln wisely hesitated to take a step which 
would surely alienate a large number of his followers, and he was 
especially deterred by the necessity of holding true to the Union cause 
the Border States of Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland, which still 
held their slaves and might be driven to the side of the Confederacy by 
too radical anti-slavery measures. 

Meanwhile Lincoln pushed two plans of his own to solve the ques- 
tion of slavery in the Border States and to establish a precedent for 
the solution of the problem in the more southern states 
satTd eman- which the President still maintained owed obedience to 
cipation and }^jj^ ^g l^j^g chief magistrate of the nation. His first 
proposition was that Congress should buy the slaves of 
the Border States for $400 each, which, at the rate of the cost of the war 

at that time, could be accom- 
plished at an expense of eighty- 
seven days fighting, or about 
$175,000,000. The slaveholders 
showed no disposition to accept 
the plan, and Congress made no 
appropriation to carry it out. 
The President's second plan, to 
remove the cause of the war root 
and branch by colonizing the 
negroes in some place out of the 
country, also failed to receive 
the approval of Congress. The 
negroes themselves were averse 
to this scheme, just as they had 
disliked the attempt of the Ameri- 
can Colonization Society to re- 
move them out of the United 
States to Liberia; and the radi- 
cal anti-slavery element opposed 
the movement as less than jus- 
tice to the blacks after their long enforced servitude. 

Congress meanwhile followed along slowly after the soul of John 

Brown, first by prohibiting slavery in the District of Columbia and 

. paying the masters about $300 for each slave, then by 

slavery prohibiting slavery in the territories of the United States 

measures of ^j^ spite of the opinion of the Supreme Court in the Dred 
Congress. ^ ^ , , ^ 

Scott case, by sanctionmg a treaty with Great Britain for 

the more effective prevention of the foreign slave trade, and by passing 




Wendell Phillips 



THE CIVIL WAR 



365 



laws for the confiscation of the property of Southerners in arms 
against the government. There were those who argued that in the 
confiscation laws the destruction of slavery was included. The laws 
were left vague on the point; yet 
it was plain that they meant to 
declare free all the slaves escap- 
ing into the Union lines and all 
who were required by their mas- 
ters to aid the rebellion. Bitter 
indeed were the quarrels between 
the radical anti-slavery leaders 
on the one hand, led by William 
Lloyd Garrison of the Liberator, 
Horace Greeley of the New York 
Tribune, Henry Ward Beecher 
of the New York Indepejident, 
Wendell Phillips, the orator of 
anti-slavery, and United States 
Senator Charles Sumner of Mas- 
sachusetts, and the conservatives 
on the other, led by George H. 
Pendleton and Clement L. Val- 
landigham of Ohio, and Horatio 
Seymour, elected governor of 
New York in 1862. 

After McClellan's failure to 
take Richmond in the summer of 1862, the presidential policies of com- 
pensated emancipation and colonization having come to i-jie Emanci- 
naught, Lincoln decided that it was necessary to strike pation Proc- 
the South a telling blow, and that for military reasons, if President 
for no other, strong measures in regard to slavery were Lincoln, 
necessary. He announced to his cabinet that he had determined on 
the extreme step of emancipation, but that he would defer the issue 
of a Proclamation of Emancipation till there was a decided victory in 
the field to give it force. On the day following the battle of Antietam 
the President proclaimed his intention of freeing the slaves of the re- 
bellious states in one hundred days, if the Southerners still held out 
against him at that time. His final Proclamation of Emancipation, 
January i, 1863, issued "by virtue of the power in me vested as com- 
mander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States, and as a 
fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion," an- 
nounced: "I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves 




Horace Greeley 



THE CIVIL WAR 



367 



HARRISBURQ 

V^NA N I A 




Practical 
meaning of 
the procla- 
mation. 



within said designated states are, and henceforward shall be, free; and 
that the executive government of the United States, including the 
military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the 
freedom of said persons." 

The practical meaning of the proclamation was that it was the 
President's intention to free the Southern slaves if his armies, by 

winning vic- 



tories, would 
give him the 
opportunity. 
Inasmuch as the whole 
South, elated at Lee's 
successes, was scofifing at 
the idea of the triumph 
of the North, the procla- 
mation was to them at 
first an object of ridicule. 
On the first day of 
the year, 1863, Lincoln 
began to accept into his 
armies all negroes, North- 
e r n and 



SCALE OF MILES 



20 fiO 100 

Second Invasion of the North 



The negroes 
Southern enrolled as 

1 • I 1 soldiers, 

alike, who 

would enlist. Previously 
the blacks of the South 
had performed the work 
of the plantations in the 
absence of their masters 
in the army. If these 
blacks could be induced to run away, the Confederacy would be weak- 
ened by the loss of laborers; and if at the same time they could be 
brought to fight for the United States, the Union would be doubly 
benefited. 

THE TURNING OF THE TIDE, 1863 

In May, 1863, when the armies resumed fighting after leaving winter 
quarters, Lee a third time turned back the invading Northern army from 
his capital at Richmond, by an overwhelming victory over ^j^^ battle 
General Hooker at Chancellorsville, sixty miles north of of Chancel- 
Richmond, in eastern Virginia. Hooker was proving no ^'^^ ^' 
more successful in command of the Union forces in Virginia than had 
McClellan and Burnside, and he was superseded by Meade. 



368 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

Emboldened by his victories, Lee left Richmond on his second at- 
tempt to invade the North, but he was decisively checked in a bloody 
The battle of battle at Gettysburg in southern Pennsylvania, July i, 2, 
Gettysburg. ^j^^j ^_ This was the only great engagement on free soil 
and is generally accounted the most important battle of the war. Each 

army planted itself on a com- 
manding height, and between 
these hills for two days the tide 
of battle surged back and forth. 
On the third day Lee took a tre- 
mendous chance and sent General 
Pickett with fifteen thousand men 
to charge on the Northerners un- 
der General Hancock on .Ceme- 
tery Ridge. The men had to cross 
an open stretch a mile in width, 
where the Northern guns mowed 
them down ; only a few succeeded 
in reaching the opposing lines. 
The Northerners had won, and 
the battle was over. The 
Unionists numbered about ninety 
thousand men in this battle, the 
Confederates seventy-five thou- 
sand; the total loss of the two 
sides was fifty-one thousand. 

A memorable Fourth of July 
succeeded the victory, for on the 
same day came the news from Vicksburg that this Gibraltar of the Mis- 
The capture sissippi had surrendered to General Grant, and that prac- 
of Vicksburg, tically the entire river was in the hands of the Federals. 
Port Hudson, the last stronghold on the river to fall, surrendered 
within a few days. The Confederacy was cut in two, the Southern 
invasion of the North turned back, and the tide of success shifted to 
the Union. 

The year closed with successful campaigning by the Union armies 
in Tennessee, where the Southern line was still being pushed back. 
General Bragg was compelled by General Rosecrans to abandon 
Union Chattanooga, whither he had retreated from Murfrees- 

boro, and this important railroad center came into 
Federal hands. Bragg then made a furious but unsuc- 
cessful onslaught upon Rosecrans at Chickamauga, near Chattanooga, 




SCALE OF MILES 



50 100 150 

The Vicksburg Campaign 



victories m 
Tennessee. 



THE CIVIL WAR 



369 



but through the firm stand of General Thomas, who held the Union 
center, the attack failed. 

Important as Chattanooga might be, it was not pleasant for 
Rosecrans's successor, 
Thomas, and his army to 
be shut up in the city, as 
they were after this bat- 
tle, by surrounding Con- 
federate forces. Grant, 
who was in command of 
the Union armies in the 
West, proceeded to re- 
lieve the situation by 
seizing the strategic point 
of Lookout Mountain and 
Missionary Ridge, after 
which Bragg and his army abandoned the 
siege of Chattanooga and withdrew to the 
south. 

In the same way Burnside, who had seized 
Knoxville, was besieged within it, until Sher- 
man went to his relief and drove Longstreet 
and his besieging army into Virginia. 

During the year 1863 violent opposition broke out in the North 
against the practice of drafting or forcing men into the army, which 
the government was at last finding necessary, in addition ^j^ - r^ 
to the call for volunteers and the offer of bounties, in riots in the 
order to secure a sufficient number of recruits. For several ""^ ' 
days after Gettysburg New York City was in the hands of a mob, 
which showed its hatred of the draft by destroying millions of dollars' 
worth of property and killing scores of negroes whom they regarded 
as the cause of the country's woes. To put down the riot United 
States soldiers were obliged to adopt extreme measures, and killed or 
wounded more than a thousand people in the city streets. There were 
lesser outbreaks at about the same time in other cities, but no other 
riot in the history of the country has assumed such serious proportions. 

Besides the disturbances over the draft, there was general dissatis- 
faction over the President's arbitrary methods of government. The 
Democrats with unsparing vigor assailed Lincoln's prac- Arbitrary 
tice of suppressing newspapers which sympathized with government, 
the South, and his custom of suspending the writ of habeas corpus and 
arbitrarily arresting thousands of people and keeping them in prison 




370 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



without informing them of the charges against them or giving them a 
hearing. The Democrats, sometimes called Copperheads for their 
opposition to the government and their alleged sympathy with the 
South, declared these measures to be contrary to the Constitution. 
Lincoln and the Republicans admitted the charge, but they claimed 

that in the crisis they 
were justified in break- 
ing the Constitution 
temporarily in order to 
save the Union, and that 
the Democrats ought 
not to be so impractical 
as to stand out for con- 
stitutional practices 
when the life of the na- 
tion was at stake. Said 
Lincoln: "I did under- 
stand, however, that my 
oath to preserve the 
Constitution to the best 
of my ability, imposed 
on me the duty of pre- 
serving by every indis- 
pensable means, that 
government; that na- 
tion, of which the Con- 
stitution was the organic 
law. Was it possible to 
lose the nation and yet 
preserve the Constitu- 
tion? By general law 
life and limb must be 
protected, yet often a 
limb must be ampu- 
tated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. 
I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful 
by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution 
through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong I assumed 
this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that to the best of my 
ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery 
or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, coun- 
try, and Constitution altogether." 




^M — 



Not According to the Constitution 
Cartoon from Vanity Fair. 
Mr. Copperhead. — ■ I know my house is on fire, just as 
well as you do. If you want to save it play on it from 
the outside as much as you choose, but I deny your right 
to enter without my permission; my house is my castle, 
and any attempt to enter it by force is clearly un-con-sti- 
tu-tion-al. 



THE CIVIL WAR 



371 



The blockade of the Southern ports by the Union navy perceptibly 
tightened its hold during the year 1863, while in turn the small South- 
ern navy, ranging free on the ocean outside the blockade, The war on 
grew more active in its attacks on Northern commerce. *^® ocean. 
The most famous of these vessels was the Alabama, which was in the 
habit of sailing falsely 
under British colors till 
she came close to a 
Union vessel, when she 
would suddenly hoist her 
true colors and call for 
surrender. Deprived by 
the blockade of the op- 
portunity of taking her 
numerous prizes into a 
home port, and forbid- 
den by the neutrality 
rules of international law 
to take them into foreign 
ports, she was accus- 
tomed to strip the cap- 
tive vessels of everything 
of value and then fire 
them or set them adrift. 
Her prisoners she freed 
in neutral ports. Dur- 
ing the last part of 1862, 
throughout 1863, and for 
six months in 1864, the 
Alabama sailed the seas, 
the terror of Northern 
commerce. In J u n e , • 

1864, she was sunk by the Union man-of-war, the Kearsarge, after an 
encounter off the coast of France, and the hazards of Northern com- 
merce were appreciably lessened. 

The damage wrought by the Alabama and her kindred ships was 
perhaps the most disastrous blow struck by the war upon any Northern 
interest. The commerce of the Atlantic, largely in the ^j^^ ^jg^p_ 
hands of the United States in the first part of the nine- 
teenth century, had to a large extent been transferred to 
foreign ships when the wars of Great Britain and France 
were at an end and capital in the United States turned to 




An Argument for the Use of Negro Soldiers 

Cartoon from Vanity Fair. 
Gentleman of Color. — -"Yah! Yah! Darkey hab de 
best ob it now. Bar's de White Man's draff and here's 
de Niggah's! " 



pearance of 
the merchant 
marine of the 
United 
States. 



372 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

manufacturing. By the year iS6i the ships of foreign nations carried 
almost one-half of the commerce of the United States, and by 1865 
the proportion had risen to three-fourths. The rapidity of the change 
in the short period of four years, 1861-1865, was largely due to the 
depredations of the Confederate ships. Twenty-five of these cruisers 
succeeded in capturing two hundred and eighty-four vessels of North- 
ern commerce, worth, including their cargoes, $25,000,000. The cap- 
tures of the Alabama alone numbered eighty- four. Many Northern 
vessels, afraid to venture on the sea as merchantmen, went into govern- 
ment transport service, more than one thousand of them gave up the 
protection of the flag of the United States and registered themselves as 
British vessels under the British flag, while only a few retained their 
registry as United States vessels. The merchant marine of the 
United States, that is, vessels of commerce sailing under the stars 
and stripes, has never recovered from the blow, and it is this situa- 
tion which from the days of the war down to the present time has 
furnished the basis of the demand for a ship subsidy, or a grant of 
money from the national treasury, to encourage commercial vessels 
to come again under the flag of the United States and win back the 
nation's lost supremacy in the carrying trade on the ocean. 

FOREIGN RELATIONS 

At the outbreak of hostilities the majority of the ruling classes of 
Great Britain undoubtedly beheld with satisfaction the impending 
The un- downfall of the great republic. They disapproved of 

friendiy^tti-^ the MorriU Tariff Law, passed in 1861, which imposed 
Britain to- sHghtly increased rates ; they chafed at the commercial 
V^Vd^ prestige of the "Giant of 'the West," and from long 

States. habit as loyal subjects of the Crown they could not dismiss 

the rancor engendered by the War of American Independence and 
nurtured by the War of 181 2. 

The British recognition of the Confederates as belligerents was 
considered by the Federal government as an unfriendly act, and the 
Breaking the eagerness of the British to continue their trade relations 
blockade. ^jj^]^ l^^g Southern States after the outbreak of the war was 

viewed by the North in general as a further exhibition of the same 
spirit. On all possible occasions they broke through the blockade 
with their ships, brought in supplies, took out cotton, and undoubtedly 
in this way prolonged the war many months. To a large extent the 
commercial houses of Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, and other 
British manufacturing centers helped to support the Southern people, 
while the latter made war on the United States. Said Earl Russell, 



THE CIVIL WAR 373 

Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in the House of 
Commons in London, "It has been a most profitable business to send 
swift vessels to break or run the blockade of the Southern ports, and 
carry their cargoes into those ports. ... I understand that every 
cargo that runs the blockade and enters Charleston is worth a million 
dollars, and that the profit on these transactions is immense. It is 
well known that the trade has attracted a great deal of attention in this 
country from those who have a keen eye to such gains, and that vessels 
have been sent to Nassau in order to break the blockade at Charleston, 
Wilmington, and other places, and carry contraband of war into some 
of the ports of the Southern States." Earl Russell added that it was 
no violation of international law for his fellow-citizens to run the block- 
ade and to sell contraband of war to the belligerents, as the neutral 
Americans themselves had maintained during the British wars against 
Napoleon when the practice had brought them millions of dollars. 

Rancor against Great Britain was at its height in the United States, 
when in November, 1861, the Trent affair occurred. Captain Wilkes 
of the United States war vessel San Jacinto stopped the The Trent 
British mail steamer Trent and removed from her by ^ff^- 
force Messrs. Mason and Slidell, Confederate commissioners to Great 
Britain and France respectively, whose especial mission it was to obtain, 
if possible, recognition from these countries of the independence of the 
Confederacy. The captives were imprisoned in Fort Warren in Boston 
harbor. The seizure was dangerously near the old British practice 
of the right of search, exercised now against Great Britain herself, and 
the British prepared for war. The question was thrust home on 
President Lincoln whether he would have two wars on his hands at 
once, and wisely, like President Polk in the similar crisis of the forties, 
he decided that one war at a time was enough and surrendered the 
prisoners on demand. Certain leaders of public opinion insisted on 
retaining Mason and Slidell, but they were overborne by the President's 
good sense. In the correspondence with the British Foreign Secretary, 
Secretary Seward adroitly congratulated the British on having come 
to the American point of view in regard to the right of search. Mason 
and Slidell went on their way, but their errand was fruitless. 

Not only political expediency, but also the plain requirements of 
international law dictated the surrender of the captured commissioners. 
Mason and Slidell, as official representatives of their -pj^^ ■^^^^j_ 
country, were indeed subject to capture, first as contra- national law 
band of war, and second, because they had disregarded 
the blockade in making their escape from the Confederacy to join the 
Trent in Cuba; but these two considerations Captain Wilkes thought- 



374 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

lessly renounced by an illegal method of capture. Instead of taking 

the captives off the Trent and allowing the ship with the rest of her 

cargo to proceed on her way, to be within legal limits he should have 

brought both the ship and the cargo into a prize court of the United 

States and there have secured a condemnation of Mason and Slidell by 

regular judicial action. 

The sudden increase of ill feeling in the North against Great Britain, 

which now arose from the belief that Her Majesty had taken an unfair 

_,, ... advantage of the United States when its hands were tied 

The concilia- . ., t^ • , t • i i- t 

tory attitude by civil war, President Lmcom did not attempt to foster, 

L^im;o1n to^* ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ permanent advantage of his country did 
wards Great everything in his power to dissipate. He consciously 
nam. proceeded in the early months of 1862 to conciliate the 

anti-slavery element of Great Britain by making with that country 
a strict treaty for the suppression of the foreign slave trade on the 
coast of Africa, and as a sign of the new determination of the national 
government at last to lay the strong hands of the law on the abhorrent 
traffic, one Nathaniel Gordon was convicted and executed for engaging 
in the trade. The President refused executive clemency to the culprit, 
though the extreme penalty had never before been exacted for the 
offense. Next came Lincoln's efforts to colonize the blacks outside the 
country and his offer to buy the slaves of the Border States, followed 
soon by the Emancipation Proclamation, which conclusive proof that 
the United States had at last put the war on an anti-slavery basis 
rendered it impossible for the freedom-loving British to offer open aid 
to the Confederacy. Their national conscience would not tolerate 
interference in the affairs of another country in the interests of human 
slavery. 

There was a serious point of difference also between the two coun- 
tries over the fitting out of Confederate vessels in the ports of Great 

'ru xi^ Britain. Number "200" was constructed in the ship- 

The fitting , . ^ . 1 ,, 1 11 

out of the yards of Liverpool, was allowed to get away and on the 

w^vesYeis^ ^^^ ^^ receive her equipment and armament of war, and 

in Great then to sail the seas as the Alabama; the Florida was 

" ^^' also built in Liverpool, and after issuing from that port 

was allowed to take on men, supplies, and armament; the Shenandoah 

sailed from London, and in Melbourne, Australia, secretly enlisted 

men. These and the other commerce destroyers of the Confederacy, 

practically the entire navy of the Southerners, were obtained by the 

South in the supposedly neutral British ports, in spite of the fact 

that the British Foreign Enlistment Act of 1819, drawn on the 

model of Washington's Neutrality Proclamation of 1793 and the 



THE CIVIL WAR 375 

United States Neutrality Act of 1794, definitely forbade the furnishing 
of ships to belligerents for use against a nation with which Great 
Britain was at peace. The United States Minister in London, Charles 
Francis Adams, son of John Quincy Adams and grandson of John 
Adams, pointed out the obvious destination of the vessels and solemnly 
called upon the British to enforce their own law. As ship after ship 
got away from English ports for the Confederacy, it seemed as if the 
alleged neutrality of Great Britain were a farce, and when in 1863 
two ironclad rams were ready to leave Minister Adams wrote to Lord 
Russell, "It would be superfluous for me to point out to your Lordship 
that this is war." The implied threat was successful, the rams did not 
sail, and no more British vessels reached the Confederacy. After the 
war Great Britain paid dearly for her aid and comfort to the "lost 
cause." 

Another serious problem in connection with foreign affairs con- 
cerned Mexico. After the war with Mexico in the forties that country 
had experienced almost constant civil strife, in the course The French 
of which citizens of the United States and of several "^ Mexico. 
European states had been violently and unjustly treated. The demand 
for intervention and redress of grievances at last became general, and 
France, Great Britain, and Spain joined their forces and invaded Mexico 
with a military expedition late in 1861 to exact satisfaction. Great 
Britain and Spain withdrew their forces after a short time, but France 
continued the castigation. She conquered the Mexicans and in spite 
of the warnings of the United States set up over them in 1864 what 
was practically a French monarchy, with Archduke Maximilian, 
brother of the Emperor of Austria, as Emperor. The Congress of 
the United States passed a resolution of protest. "Resolved, that the 
Congress of the United States are unwilling by silence to leave the 
nations of the world under the impression that they are indifferent 
spectators of the deplorable events now transpiring in the republic of 
Mexico; therefore they think it fit to declare that it does not accord 
with the sentiment of the people of the United States to acknowledge 
that a monarchical government may be erected on the ruins of any 
republican government in America, under the auspices of any European 
power." The national convention of the Republican party passed an 
even stronger resolution on the subject. 

The French well knew that the United States was in no position 
to enforce the Monroe Doctrine against them, and the ^^^ tempo- 
new monarchy temporarily went on its course, while the rary success 
United States reserved the visitation of its wrath till a ° ^ ® ^^^'^ ' 
later day. 



376 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



THE WAR AND THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1864 

The Confederacy's only political contest had taken place late in 

1 86 1, when Jefferson Davis was unanimously elected Presi- 

nection be- dent Under the Permanent Constitution for a term of six 

tweenthewar years, but the North was confronted with the necessity of 
and politics. ■' ' . --i rr,^ ii 

a presidential contest m the critical year ot 1864, when the 

outcome of the political struggle depended almost entirely on the for- 
tunes of war. 

Fighting in 1864 began in May. General Grant, fresh from his 
victories in the West and South, was placed by President Lincoln in 
command of all the Union forces in the field. Grant left 
before"^ Sherman in command of the armies around Chattanooga, 

^^^^mond, and himself came to Virginia to try his skill against 
Richmond. His policy was to take the Southern capital 
from the north, and to the President he announced: "I will fight 

it out on this line if it 
takes all summer." 
He fought the ex- 
hausting but indeci- 
sive battles of the 
Wilderness, Spottsyl- 
vania, and Cold Har- 
bor, and after six 
weeks of almost con- 
tinuous struggle he 
gave up the attempt 
to approach Rich- 
mond from the north, 
transferred his army 
to the south of the 
James, and settled 
down to the siege of 
Petersburg. Like Mc- 
Clellan in 1862, Grant 
had at last decided to 
approach Richmond 
from the south. 

In the trying 
month of May, 1864, 
when the Northern people were keyed up to the top notch of war 
excitement, President Lincoln was renominated by the Republican 




TJnion Forces ^— *-— — ^— 



SCALE OF MILES 



20 40 SO 

Operations in the East 



THE CIVIL WAR 377 

party, with its accessions of War Democrats now often called the 
Union party, for the office of President, and Andrew Johnson, a War 
Democrat and loyal Union Governor of Tennessee, was 
named for the vice presidency. The platform adopted nation of 
heartily supported the war and demanded a constitutional Ppsident 
amendment to follow up the Emancipation Proclamation 
and provide for the freedom of the slaves not only in the hostile South- 
ern States but in every state of the Union. 

It was a dramatic situation, the outcome of which depended almost 
entirely on the issue of battles still unfought. If victory should come 
to the standards of the North, the Republicans would ^j^^ despon- 
have the advantage, but if there should be no victories in dency of the 
the field for the Union and the already long-drawn-out war ^^" 
should become more unpopular, the Democrats would have their chance. 
Weeks passed after the Republican convention, bringing not only no 
victories to clear the atmosphere but at last in their stead a decided 
repulse of the Union forces at Petersburg, which Grant attempted to 
take by assault on the thirtieth of July. To capture the outpost, 
Grant's forces had constructed a mine underneath the town at great 
labor. The mine was exploded and much havoc wrought, but in the 
confusion the Union soldiers failed in their efforts to make their way 
into the stronghold. A deep gloom settled down on the supporters of 
the war. Still Grant would not waver, and Lincoln approved, tele- 
graphing in characteristic fashion, "Hold on with a bull-dog grip and 
chew and choke as much as possible." Some now believed that the 
President could not possibly be reelected and called upon him to de- 
cline the renomination and make room for another to lead the party; 
even Lincoln himself recorded his belief that he would be defeated. 

The Democrats met in national convention during this tense 
situation and gave their nomination to General McClellan, the deposed 
idol of the Army of the Potomac, no longer in active x^g Demo- 
command, and wrote into their platform the daring cratic nomi- 
words, "Four years of failure to restore the Union by the capture 
the experiment of war." Then, like a burst of light in of Atlanta, 
the darkness, came the exciting announcement of General Sherman's 
capture of Atlanta, and the news was telegraphed to the despairing 
Republican hosts one day after the adjournment of the Democratic 
convention! One day only did the Democrats enjoy their platform 
and then its very bottom dropped out, and the gloom of the Repub- 
licans was turned into the wildest enthusiasm. 

For four months Sherman with 100,000 soldiers had been battling 
his way from Chattanooga through the mountains of southern Ten- 



378 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



nessee and northern Georgia, his every step contested by 75,000 Con- 
Military federates. Atlanta, his objective, was the railroad and 
value of manufacturing center of the Confederacy, a collecting and 
Atlanta. distributing point for supplies of all kinds, and its loss 
was a tremendous blow to the Confederacy. 

The enthusiasm of the supporters of the war which was now 
kindled was sustained to the day 
Other timely of election by a series 
victories. of Other timely victo- 
ries. General Sheridan, in three 
battles in the Shenandoah Valley, 
worsted General Early, who had 
sought by a raid through this val- 
ley in the direction of Washington 
to turn Grant away from Rich- 
mond. Sheridan followed up his 
victories by laying waste the rich 
valley so completely that no fur- 
ther invasion through that area 
was to be feared. After his men 
had finished their work of de- 
struction it was said that "a crow 
in flying from Staunton to Win- 
chester must carry his rations." 
Rear Admiral Farragut, too, 
achieved a brilliant victory for 
the Union in Mobile Bay, which 
closed that important center for 
blockade running, the Confeder- 
acy's last stronghold on the Gulf. 

The vote in the electoral colleges stood 212 for Lincoln to 21 for 
McClellan, the latter carrying but the three states of New Jersey, 
The reelec- Delaware, and Kentucky. Lincoln's sweeping victory 
tion of at the polls encouraged the soldiers to fight more valiantly 

Lincoln. than ever, and the danger of official repudiation of the 

Emancipation Proclamation and of the cessation of the war before the 
South was thoroughly conquered was averted. 




WiLU.-ui T. Sherman 



THE END OF THE WAR 



Election day was hardly over when Sherman burned the captured 
city of Atlanta and plunged into the heart of the Confederacy through 
the state of Georgia, out of all communication with the North and 



THE CIVIL WAR 



379 



with his own base of supplies, on his famous "March to the Sea." 
The Confederate forces under Hood, whose business it was The last 
to oppose Sherman while Lee operated against Grant blows, 
in Virginia, attempted to turn him back from this move; but Sherman 
boldly divided his forces and left Thomas to engage Hood. Thomas 
fulfilled the charge and utterly routed his opponent at Nashville. 



ANashv^le T,- kI^ 
fFtenklin) " ^"-''V-^^ 




Sherman's army found no mihtary force to oppose it, and marched in a 
devastating journey, eating and burning its way in a swath sixty miles 
wide across Georgia to the sea. In four weeks Sherman presented the 
city of Savannah to the nation as a Christmas present, and then turned 
on his way up the coast toward Grant in Virginia, prepared to catch Lee 
if the latter tried to escape to the south. 

Early in the spring of 1865 Sheridan's vigilant cavalry cut off Lee's 
supplies on the west and south of Richmond; and while Lee was striking 
back at Sheridan, Grant slipped into the long-besieged town ^j^^ surren- 
of Petersburg and forced Lee to abandon Richmond. These der of Lee 
stirring events took place in the first week of April, 1865. ^" ns on. 
Lee tried to escape to the south and join General Joseph Johnston, who 
was at the head of a Confederate force in North Carolina between Sher- 
man and Grant; but he was cut off by the Union troops and forced 
to surrender to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, on April 
9, 1865, while Johnston surrendered to Sherman on April 26. 

The week from the capture of Petersburg and Richmond to the 
surrender of Lee was one of tremendous excitement, com- ^j^^ j^^^ 
parable only to the week of excitement in April four years week of the 
earlier, ushered in by the firing on Fort Sumter. In 1861 ^"' 
on both sides were foreboding and dread; now in 1865 on the one 



38o TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

side was the excitement of victory, and on the other the despair of rec- 
ognized defeat. 

Within a week after the surrender at Appomattox Court House the 
joy of the North was turned into mourning by the shocking news that 

an actor, John Wilkes Booth, a half-crazed Southern 
The assassi- i • i , ■ i , • ^ t • i , 

nation of sympathizer, who did not realize that Lincoln was the 

President South's best friend, and that the wisdom and moderation 

of the President would be sadly needed in the solution of 

the problems that were to follow, had entered the box where the 

President was sitting in Ford's theater in Washington and shot him 

through the head. The leader was struck down in the hour of triumph. 

The poet, Walt Whitman, voiced the anguish of the North in the lines: 

"O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done, 
The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won, 
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting, 
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring; 
But O heart! heart! heart! 
O the bleeding drops of red, 

Where on the deck my Captain lies, 
Fallen cold and dead. 

"O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells; 
Rise up — for you the flag is flung — for you the bugle trills. 
For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths — for you the shores a-crowding, 
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning; 
Here Captain! dear father! 

This arm beneath your head ! 
It is some dream that on the deck 
You've fallen cold and dead." 

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still, 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will, 
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done, 
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won; 
Exult O shores, and ring O bells! 
But I with mournful tread, 

Walk the deck my Captain lies. 
Fallen cold and dead. 

The President's assassin fled from Washington by night across the 

Potomac into Virginia, where he was overtaken and shot in a barn by 

Union soldiers after a pursuit of twelve days. The 

Booth and treasonable and murderous plot embraced other members 

his fellow- Qf ^}^g government. Simultaneously with the President's 
conspirators. .° . ., , , , , t i i -n o 

assassination, an assailant stabbed but did not kill Secre- 
tary of State Seward as he lay ill in bed; the man was apprehended, 
tried by a court martial, and hanged, as was a would-be assassin of 



THE CIVIL WAR 381 

Vice President Johnson, who also failed of his purpose. Four con- 
spirators in all, including one woman, went to the gallows; three were 
imprisoned for life and one for six years. 

Both houses of Congress and in due season three-fourths of the states 
followed up the military triumph by giving their formal consent to the 
thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, which reads T^e twr- 
as follows: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, teenthamend- 
save as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall the Consti- 
have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United tution. 
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." The Emancipa- 
tion Proclamation had not freed the slaves in the loyal Border 
States nor in certain parts of Louisiana which had been brought 
back to allegiance to the United States by conquest. The amend- 
ment, on the other hand, appHed to every part of the United States; 
it insured freedom to all blacks in the country and could be changed 
only by another amendment. The Dred Scott Decision, which looked 
toward the legalizing of slavery in the territories and probably in the 
states as well, was now devoid of all force. 

In the more than two thousand engagements of the war, probably 
360,000 men on the Union side and over 250,000 on the Confederate 
side lost their lives. The expense of the conflict to the The cost of 
United States was $3,250,000,000 above the ordinary *^® ^^• 
expenses of civil administration. In 1865 the national debt was $2,997,- 
000,000, bearing the huge annual interest of $140,000,000. The cost 
of the war on the Southern side is unknown. 

As in the time of the Revolution and ever since that time, foreign 
immigrants in the crisis of the Civil War rendered distinguished services 
to their adopted country. The patriotic Germans in the ^j^^ services 
critical months in 1861 in Missouri turned the tide in that of foreigners 
state in favor of the Union. Thousands of the newcomers '" ^ ^^' 
were in both armies, more, undoubtedly, in the ranks of the Northern 
States, which had always attracted the foreigners in greater numbers 
than did the Southern States. There were whole regiments of men 
in the Union army unable to speak the English language. Of the 
31,000,000 people inhabiting the country in i860, 4,000,000, or approxi- 
mately thirteen per cent, were foreign born. 

THE NORTHERN AND THE SOUTHERN LEADERS 

The leader of the North during the war period was President 
Abraham Lincoln. He was born of poor parents Febru- Abraham 
ary 12, 1809, in a log hut in the slave state of Kentucky, Lincoln, 
and was reared on the frontier in the free state of Illinois, where 



382 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 




Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln 



he was successively rail-splitter, flatboatman, clerk in the country 
grocery store, and captain in the state militia, until by his own efforts he 
succeeded in obtaining sufficient education to practice Jaw. Beyond 
membership in his own state legislature and one term in the national 

House of Representatives at 
Washington during the Mexican 
war, he had no official training 
for the chief magistracy. Some- 
times as President he proved 
unfortunate in his choice of ad- 
visers, occasionally his favorite 
measures failed of enactment in 
Congress, such, for example, as 
compensated emancipation in 
the Border States and the coloni- 
zation of the negroes outside the 
United States, and from time to time he made mistakes. His use of the 
patronage was certainly not in accordance with the standards of the 
civil service of the present day. Yet in spite of his limitations and 
mistakes he was the greatest President since the time of Washington, 
and by his broad sympathies, his firmness, judgment, patience, free- 
dom from resentment, and tact, he brought the ship of state safely 
through the troubled waters. Nature endowed him with a keen intel- 
lect, a large heart, a strong will, and a gentleness of character that 
enabled him to command at the same time the love and the respect 
of his fellowmen. 

The principles which he gave to the nation in his second inaugural 
address were the mainspring of his own life: "With malice toward 
none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as 
God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the 
work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care 
for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, 
and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and 
lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations." 

Without the education of the schools, Lincoln, by the study of the 
Bible and Shakespeare, made himself a master in the use of the English 
Lincoln's language. Speaking at the battlefield of Gettysburg, 

oration at November 19, 1863, on the occasion of its dedication as a 
Gettysburg. national soldiers' cemetery, he followed Edward Everett, 
the polished orator of the schools, in words that are now classic, while 
those of Everett are forgotten. "Fourscore and seven years ago our 
fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in 



Lincoln's 
second 
inaugural 
address. 



THE CIVIL WAR 



383 



liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, 
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We 
are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate 
a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave 
their lives that that nation might 
live. It is altogether fitting and 
proper that we should do this. 
But, in a larger sense, we can- 
not dedicate — we cannot con- 
secrate — we cannot hallow — 
this ground. The brave men, 
living and dead, who struggled 
here, have consecrated it far be- 
yond our poor power to add or to 
detract. The world will little 
note nor long remember what we 
say here, but it can never forget 
what they did here. It is for us, 
the living, rather, to be dedi- 
cated here to the unfinished work 
which they who fought here have 
thus far so nobly advanced. It 
is rather for us to be here dedi- 
cated to the great task remaining 
before us — that from these hon- 
ored dead we take increased de- 
votion to that cause for which 

they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve 
that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under 
God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the 
people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." 
The greatest military leader of the North was General Ulysses S. 
Grant. Born in Ohio in 1822, he received the nation's military train- 
ing at West Point, but after active service in the Mexican General 
War retired from the army to civil life. At thirty-nine Ulysses S. 
years of age, when the first call to arms came in 186 1, 
he was a clerk in a saddlery and harness shop in Galena, Illinois. His 
advance in military command was steady throughout the war. Though 
not rapid and brilliant in his movements on the field of battle, he was 
always sure, and the results justified his promotion in every case. His 
tenacity overcame every obstacle. 




Ulysses S. Grant 



384 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTION.AL STRIFE 



Jefferson Davis, the one President of the Confederacy, was born 
in Kentucky in iSoS, a few miles from the birthplace of Abraham Lin- 
jefferson coln. Both families early moved from the state, the one 

Davis. ^Q fj-gg Illinois and the other to the slave state of Missis- 

sippi. After his education at West Point, Davis saw several years of 

active service in the army and 
then resigned to enter politics. 
He was Secretary of War under 
Pierce and later United States 
Senator from Mississippi. When 
called to the presidency of the 
Confederacy, it was by unanimous 
choice. Gifted with a wonderful 
capacity for hard work, he allowed 
scarcely a detail of administration 
to be intrusted to subordinates. 
He possessed qualities of leader- 
ship that held the confidence and 
maintained the courage of the 
people through the dark days 
which his section was called upon 
to endure. In the bitterness that 
followed the assassination of Presi- 
Jefferson DAvqs dent Lincoln, Davis was suspected 

of complicity in the crime and 
was subjected to much unjust humiliation; but he was fully cleared 
of the charges in the minds of all fair-minded citizens. His name is 
now remembered as that of a pure-minded patriot, who followed the 
right as he saw it. He lived till 1889, attended in his last years by 
misfortune and sorrow. 

General Robert E. Lee, the South's greatest military leader, was 
born in Virginia in 1807, one year before Jefferson Davis, two years 
General before Abraham Lincoln, and fifteen years before his an- 

Robert E. tagonist, Ulysses S. Grant. He had a military education 
at West Point, saw service in the regular army during the 
Mexican War, and when secession came was still in the army as a lieu- 
tenant colonel. It was from a sense of duty that he refused an offer of 
high command in the Federal army and linked his fortunes with those 
of his native state. To a friend he wrote, when the storm broke, "I 
have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hands against my 
relatives, my children, my home." His wonderful defense of Richmond 
entitles him to rank among the world's greatest defensive commanders. 




THE CIVIL WAR 



38s 



When he surrendered to General Grant at Appomattox Court House, his 
greatness of mind and heart were 
as conspicuous as in his brighter 
days. He might easily have 
dragged out a weak resistance in 
the mountains, perhaps for years, 
but recognizing that the Con- 
federacy was doomed, for the 
good of his country he laid down 
his arms. Ecjually great at the 
historic moment, Grant asked the 
Southerners to go home and go 
to work, and he allowed them to 
take their horses with them, for, 
as he said, "they would need 
them in the spring plowing." 
Lee loyally accepted the results 
of the war and earnestly advised 
his countrymen to take the 
same course. From 1S65 till his 
death in 1S70 he was president 
of a small college of less than 
half a hundred students in Lex- 
ington, Virginia, then called 
Washington College, but since, in his honor, known as Washington 
and Lee University. 

SOCLVL AND INDUSTRIAL CONDITIONS 

The activities of the nation during the war period were far from 
being confined to the field of battle and the political arena. The people 
at home were engaged in their ordinary pursuits as well 
as in the extraordinary labors that fell to them as their 
part in the great struggle. As soon as men began to go to 
war, the women of the North organized themselves into 
small local societies to provide the soldiers with the extra articles of 
clothing and the delicacies of food that the government could not 
furnish; and shortly the United States Sanitary Commission was 
formed to carry on such work in more systematic fashion. 

Under the guidance of this Commission the conditions of camp life 
were improved, assistance was given in caring for the wounded on the 
field of battle, and the work of the hospitals was furthered. The 
people were called upon to raise money for the cause and to furnish 




Robert E. Lee 



The United 
States 
Sanitary 
Commission. 



386 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 



provisions of various kinds. Upon the capture of Atlanta in 1864, the 
first telegram sent to the North by the agents of the Corn- 
field service mission ran, "We are established in this place; hurry on 

?/*^®. . large quantities of vegetables." A certain small town ir 
Commission. on o 

Illinois, after such a call, sent to the front five hundred 
bushels of potatoes; and many a similar contribution came from the 
"onion days" and "potato days" of the public schools and the "onion 
funds " of the large city newspapers. The school boys and girls of a 
small New England city, urged one year to devote their Fourth of July 
fire-cracker money to buy oranges and lemons for the soldiers, raised 
$543.43. A captain of the 104th Illinois in the dead of winter sent 
home a letter, which was read in the churches of a little village in that 
state, stating that one-half of the regiment were without socks, and 
on Monday morning two hundred and seventy-five pairs were dis- 
patched to the men by mail. To the twenty-five thousand who had 
been wounded in the battle of Gettysburg the Sanitary Commission 
distributed $75,000 worth of food and clothing, including such delicacies 
as could be brought to them, — tea, coffee, poultry, butter, eggs, bread, 
milk, oranges, lemons, and ice; and in the Wilderness campaign in 
1864 more than $500,000 was similarly expended by the Commission. 
More than three million dollars was raised for the work by the soldiers' 
fairs which were held in the different cities and towns. 

The United States Christian Commission, in its self-imposed task 
of caring for the moral and religious condition of the army, through 
The United the holding of religious services, the distribution of Bibles, 
Ciuistian tracts, and other literature, and the ministration to the 

Commission various needs of the soldiers in the hospitals, expended 
nationaf^ $6,000,000. Upon the families of the soldiers millions 
charities. were expended, raised by private organizations through 

voluntary subscription, and by city and state through taxation. 
Never before had so much been done in a great war for the care and 
comfort of the private soldier and his dependents. 

During the war the business interests of the North passed first 
through a period of severe panic and then through one of great pros- 
The financial Parity. In the excitement produced by the election of 
panic of Lincoln and the secession of the Southern States, the 

country was plunged into a panic similar to that of 1857. 
The prospective loss of the trade of the South, .which bought heavily 
in the North, and the certain loss of the $300,000,000 already due, 
which the Southern Congress formally declared was not to be paid, 
were more than a large number of firms could weather, and many went 
to the wall. The unsettled state of the public mind, always attending 



THE CIVIL WAR 387. 

the outbreak of a war, added to the gloom of the business world. The 
banks, too, unmindful of the lessons of the panic of 1837 and 1857, 
were maintaining in their vaults too small cash reserves for the pay- 
ment of their notes, and in several of the northwestern states they were 
unfortunately basing their issues of notes on the worthless bonds of 
the seceded states. Eighty-nine out of the one hundred and ten banks 
of Illinois closed their doors, while the city of Chicago lost practically 
all its banking capital. 

Gradually in the year 1862 a wave of prosperity set in, which con- 
tinued to the end of the war. Business adjusted itself to the altered 
conditions, and the heavy contracts given out by the gov- 
ernment to manufacturers in every section of the country recovery 
for the equipment of the army and navy, and the in- ^^^'^ ^^^ 
crease in prices that followed the issue of paper money 
by the government, contributed to the commercial revival. 

Rich new mines of gold were opened up in Idaho and Montana 
during the war, and mining industry in general flourished. The 
agricultural output was greater than ever, for high prices. Agricultural 
a ready market in Europe, and the special demands of the mining, and 
army held out unusual inducements to farmers to increase ing pros- 
production in every possible way. Abundantly supplied Parity, 
with raw material from the mines and the farms, and well served by 
the railroads and water transportation systems, manufacturing was 
also on the increase. The woolen mills were called upon to supply ma- 
terial for the uniforms of the soldiers, the shoe factories to make their 
shoes, and the iron and steel mills to turn out munitions of war. The 
output of sewing machines and of other new inventions just coming 
into general use increased tremendously, and, as might be expected, 
the manufacture of reapers and other labor-saving devices, to do the 
work of the men absent in the army, was especially stimulated. 

City after city inaugurated its first street railway system of horse 
cars, and installed its first fire alarm telegraph and steam fire engines; 
the larger cities secured free delivery of mail, and the post Local im- 
office money order system and the railway post office provements. 
first went into operation during the period. 

Ordinary deposit banks, savings banks, and insurance companies 
found the times prosperous. It was easy to induce people to loan 
money to the government; in one year purchasers were Flourishing 
readily found for its bonds to the amount of $500,000,000 finances, 
and in another year to the extent of $850,000,000. Flourishing busi- 
ness conditions, as well as a loyal recognition of the necessity of a large 
revenue for waging the war, brought it about, too, that extremely 



•388 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

heavy internal taxation on manufactured goods and on the various 
trades and professions, a heavy tax on incomes, and higher tariff 
rates were borne ungrudingly. 

The Walker Tariff Act of 1846 had been succeeded by another law 
of moderate rates in 1857, after which, under the influence of the two 
Changes in panics of 1857 and 1860-1861, the tide set in toward higher 
the tariff. tariff rates. To satisfy depressed business interests, the 

Morrill Tariff, with higher rates, was put on the statute books in 1861 
before the war opened. After April, 1 861, when, to the usual arguments 
in favor of high protection, the war added the special argument of the 
necessity of securing increased revenue with which to meet the vast 
expenses of the operations of the army and navy, special tariff acts, 
imposing higher rates on various articles, were enacted in every ses- 
sion of Congress down to 1865, when the tariff rates reached the 
highest point in the history of the country to that time. 

The banking system, which had been in the hands of the states 
since the time of Andrew Jackson and was responsible for the evils of 
„. the wild-cat notes in 1 860-1 861, was changed by the 

national passage of the National Banking Act of 1S63, which pro- 

banks, vided for a new system of banks chartered by the United 

States instead of by the states. Under this act the new national banks 
were to be governed, not by a central board of directors at Washington, 
as were the first and second banks of the United States, but each by its 
own local board of directors under the general supervision of the comp- 
troller of the currency in Washington; and, unlike the former national 
banks, the new banks were not to enjoy the privilege of holding on 
deposit the money of the United States. Government receipts were 
still to be kept in the vaults of the treasury at Washington and in the 
subtreasuries in various cities. The new institutions were to issue 
their notes to circulate as money, but these notes, unlike those of the 
wild-cat state banks, were to be secured, first, by a deposit of United 
States bonds in the treasury at Washington, and second, by a cash 
reserve of twenty-five per cent of its liabilities, which was to be main- 
tained by each bank in its own vaults for purposes of redemption. In 
order to force the banks to give up their state charters and come under 
the national law, a very heavy tax was later levied by Congress on 
state bank issues, and almost all the banks of the country took out 
national charters. 

There was no gold or silver in circulation as money at this period. 
These coins had been supplanted by the paper notes of the banks, by 
the paper fractional currency, and by the paper promises of the United 
States, known as "greenbacks." The "greenbacks," bv the legal 



THE CrVlL WAR 389 

tender law made lawful money, were like the old paper money uced 

during and after the War of Independence; they had no 

gold or silver back of them, and therefore they went up fluctuating 

and down in value, when measured in gold, as the people "greenback" 

gained or lost confidence in the ability of the government 

to make the notes good. When battles went against the government 

and the people had little confidence that it would ever be able to meet 

its obligations, the notes fell in value, whereas victories sent their 

value up. 

As a result of the shifting value of the greenbacks and the consequent 
rise and fall in prices, the profits of the speculators and the merchants 
who had commodities to sell were huge, but balanced ^^ ,. . 
over against these advantages to a few were certain evils, the unstable 
such as the lagging wages of laborers and of all who lived ^^^^^^y- 
on salaries, for wages never rise as rapidly as prices. 

Education suffered but little. Vassar College, the first adequately 
equipped institution of collegiate rank for women in the history of the 
country, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell The cause 
University, Lehigh University, the University of Kansas, °^ education, 
and various other higher institutions of learning were founded in spite 
of the war. The public schools were filled to overflowing. No matter 
how fierce the struggle on the field of battle, no matter how trs- 
mendous the popular excitement in the North, the school bell rang out 
as usual in the first week of September, and day after day thereafter 
summoned the youth of the land in ever-increasing numbers to their 
daily tasks. 

The circus, the theater, and the opera, every form of amusement 
and luxury, were never more popular. "Extravagance, luxury, these 
are the signs of the times," declared the editor of the ^^^3 
Nnv York Evening Post. "Who at the North would and 
ever think of war, if he had not a friend in the army or did ®^t^^^^g^°ce. 
not. read the newspapers? Go into Broadway and we will show you 
what is meant by extravagance. Ask Stewart about the demand for 
camel's-hair shawls, and he will say 'monstrous.' Ask Tiffany what 
kind of diamonds are called for. He will answer, 'the prodigious,' 
'as near hen's-egg size as possible,' 'price no object.' " 

Life in the South during the epoch was affected by two great blights 
from which the North was free, — the blockade and the devastation of 
invading armies. With the usual shipments both from Life in the 
Europe and from the Northern States cut off, articles of Confederacy, 
necessity as well as of luxury became scarce. These could not be 
manufactured in the South itself, because there was neither oppor- 



.390 TERRITORL\L EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 




THE CIVIL WAR 391 

tunity nor means for building the necessary factories and securing 
the needed machinery, nor men enough to carry on the work. To- 
bacco as well as cotton almost ceased to have value on account of the 
lack of an outside market, and both products were destroyed in large 
quantities to prevent their falling into the hands of the invaders, while 
the planters from necessity turned to the cultivation of the more useful 
wheat and corn. The boast that "Cotton was king," and that to 
secure it for their factories the British would break the blockade and 
recognize the independence of the Confederacy was never realized. 
On the other hand. Great Britain suffered from failure of crops for 
three successive years, and in her need she found the wheat of the 
United States well nigh indispensable. The very year when her 
importations of wheat from the United States were at their highest, 
almost no cotton at all arrived from the Confederacy. 

The South could boast of no extensive gold, silver, copper, or iron 
mines, nor of petroleum wells and extensive supplies of salt. Her 
railroads fell to pieces for want of repairs. She continued Severe 
to care for education as she had time and money; her privations, 
soldiers and their families she cared for, so far as she was able, and, like 
the North, when she could she buried herself in pleasures and amuse- 
ments. Dire want, however, gave little opportunity for extravagance, 
and by 1864 and 1865 even the richest families were enduring the most 
trying privations. No immigrants came to her shores from abroad, 
and she herself contributed little to the settlement of a Confederate 
frontier in the West. 

One fundamental reason for the success of the North is plain. The 
Confederacy went down, not from the inferior ability of her generals 
and soldiers, for here she was the equal of her rival, but industrial 
largely because she was overborne by superior resources, supremacy 
The prosperous North raised taxes more easily and in ° ® ^^'^^' 
greater amounts, and could send more men to the field of battle, and 
clothe and equip them better. The war proved that while a purely 
agricultural society, like that of the Southern States, devoted almost 
entirely to one industry and consequently dependent on the outside 
world for many necessities, could live well and happily in time of peace, 
it could not maintain itself indefinitely during the strain of blockade 
and invading armies. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Morse, Abraham Lincoln; Rhodes, United States, III, IV, and V; I. M. Tarbell, 
Abraham Lincoln; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln; F. Bancroft, William H. 
Seivard; Hart, Salmon P. Chase; Fiske, Mississippi Valley; C. F. Adams, Charles 
Francis Adams; R. E. Lee, Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee; T. N. 



392 TERRITORIAL EXPANSION AND SECTIONAL STRIFE 

Page, Robert E. Lee; Rhodes, Lectures on the American Civil War; Paxson, Civil War; 
C. F. Adams, Studies, 203-414; Harding, Orations, 382-420; Fite, Social and hidus- 
trial Conditions. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Firing on Fort Sumter. Epochs, VIII, 58-67; Rhodes, United States, 
III, 349-374; Contemporaries, IV, 211-227; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, IV, 
44-109. 

2. The Emancipation Proclamation. Epochs, VIII, 107-111; Rhodes, United 
States, IV, 157-165; Foster, Century of Diplomacy, 392-397; Contemporaries, IV, 390- 
411 ; C. F. Adams, Charles Francis Adams, 291-305. 

3. The Alabama. Epochs, VIII, 145-148; Rhodes, United States, IV, 85-94, 
365-371, and 510-511; Foster, Century of Diplomacy, 424-428; Contemporaries, IV, 
416-418, and 550-556; C. F. Adams, Charles Francis Adams, 306-344, and 377-397; 
Hill, Decisive Battles, 175-211; Epochs, VIII, 145-148, and IX, 159-174. 

4. The Trent Affair. Epochs, VIII, 81-90; Rhodes, United States, III, 520; 
Foster, Century of Diplomacy, 367-372; Contemporaries, IV, 298-300; C. F. Adams, 
Charles Francis Adams, 210-239. 

5. The Assassination of President Lincoln. Rhodes, United States, V, 139- 
161; D. M. DeWitt, The Assassination of President Lincoln; Epochs, IX, 16-56; 
Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, X, 277-325. 

6. The United States Sanitary Commission. Fite, Social and Industrial 
Conditions, 276-283; Rhodes, United States, V, 244-259; Contemporaries, IV, 270-272. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 
H. W. Beecher, Norwood; W. E. Barton, A Hero in Homespun; Chas. F. Browne 
(Artemus Ward), Sketches; L. M. Alcott, Hospital Sketches; S. W. Mitchell, In War 
Time; T. B. Read, Sheridan's Ride; E. C. Stedman, Kearney at Seven Pines; G. W. 
Cable, The Cavalier; S. Crane, Red Badge of Courage; Lowell, Bigloiv Papers, Second 
Series, and Harvard Commemoration Ode; Holmes, In War Time; Longfellow, The 
Cumberland; J. T. Trowbridge, Cudjo's Cave; W. Churchill, The Crisis; T. N. Page, 
Two Little Confederates ; M. R. S. Antjrews, Perfect Tribute; Bryant, Our Country's 
Call; Whitman, My Captain. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Did Lincoln make a mistake in sending the relief expedition to Fort Sumter? Did 
Davis make a mistake in ordering his troops to fire on Sumter? Was Lincoln's declara- 
tion of a blockade a mistake? Compare the North's insistence on holding the Mis- 
sissippi with that of the frontiersmen of Kentucky and Tennessee on holding the same 
river from 1783 to 1795. What was the importance of sea power during the war? 
What were the services of Stonewall Jackson to the Confederacy? What was Lincoln's 
Border State policy? What arguments can you give for and against the use of negro 
soldiers in the Union army? Compare the generalship of Grant and Lee, of Nathaniel 
Greene and Stonewall Jackson. What was Lincoln's policy toward Great Britain? 
Give a history of the Monroe Doctrine down to 1865. What would have been the 
probable effect on the outcome of the war of the election of McClellan? How do you 
account for the surrender by the states to the United States of the control of the banking 
system, which the states had won in the days of Jackson? What was the fundamental 
reason for the success of the Union? What were the leading issues in current politics 
before the people in the presidential campaign of 1864? State the difference between 
McClellan's and Grant's plans for the capture of -Richmond. In what important 
respects did conditions in the South differ from those in the North in i860? 



PART VII 
AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

CHAPTER XXIV 
ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION 

THE NEW ERA 

In the crisis 1861-1865, the necessity of withdrawing millions of 
men from the productive pursuits of peace and supporting them in 
the destructive work of war made unusual demands upon Economic 
the nation and called forth or suggested new methods of changes, 
developing and making use of its natural resources. The vast riches 
of the United States had never been appreciated before this strain 
was put upon them, but the forces set in motion by the extraor- 
dinary circumstances, far from ceasing with the war, continued after 
peace was declared, and the era after 1865 was one of pronounced 
industrial development. New principles of industrial organization 
were adopted, affecting the life of every citizen. Questions of business 
method came to the front. The effect of big business on the general 
welfare, the warfare of capital and labor, the proper means of develop- 
ing and conserving natural resources, these and related problems 
pressed for solution. At first private organizations dealt with these 
questions, gradually pohtical parties, state legislatures, and finally 
the national legislature took them up, until by 1900 they were foremost 
topics in the nation's politics. 

In the realm of politics the prominent new feature of the period after 
1865 was the growing alliance between politics and business. Aside 
from this tendency, political life was characterized by Political 
development along old lines. In the triumph of the North, changes. 
Washington's and Jackson's conception of a strong central government, 
which had been gaining ground in the ante-bellum era, received the 
sanction of a victory at arms. Questions of sectional interest were 
bound still to arise, but never since the great struggle has the spirit of 
sectionalism arrayed itself against the national government to the 
point of armed antagonism. The right of the national government 

393 



394 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

to coerce a disobedient state was vindicated; the extreme right of 
secession was discredited and nationalism rendered triumphant over 
states' rights. The democracy of Jefferson and Jackson won new 
victories over conservative aristocracy in the emancipation of the 
blacks and in the openmg up of new opportunities to the poor Southern 
whites. These were great achievements, but they were accomplished 
at the expense of a long train of evils, among which were the temporary 
destruction of the prosperity of the Southern States and the perplexities 
throughout the Union of caring for the freedmen. As the first great 
era in the history of the United States as a nation began when Wash- 
ington wa^ President, as the second took shape during the presidency of 
Thomas Jefferson and the third during that of Andrew Jackson, so the 
opening of the fourth is associated with the Civil War era of Abraham 
Lincoln, 

INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS 

A notable characteristic of the economic life of the country when 
it emerged from Civil War was the tendency of capital toward consolida- 
tion and monopoly. Said the Comtnercial and Financial 
The spmt of Chronicle of New York in 1866: "There is an increasing 
tion in the tendency in our capital to move in larger masses than 
worldf^^ formerly. Small business firms compete at more dis- 

advantage with richer houses, and are gradually being 
absorbed into them. . . . The power accumulating in the mioneyed 
classes from the concentration of capital in large masses is attract- 
ing the attention of close observers of the money market. It is one 
of the signs of the times and will probably exert no small influence over 
the future growth of our industrial and commercial enterprise." The 
small industrial units and the free competition of earlier days were 
passing. Combination was the rule of the hour, a movement to merge 
isolated, competing and often hostile units into larger and more har- 
monious groups. 

The formation of larger industrial units was especially conspicuous 
in the railway world. While the war still persisted, two small roads 
Raib-oad con- in Maine united to form the Maine Central; seven roads 
soiidation. from Boston to Ogdensburg, New York, combined; the 
Erie absorbed a number of small rivals; the Pennsylvania gained 
possession of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago, and other 
smaller roads; and the Chicago and Northwestern absorbed numerous 
competitors north and west of Chicago. 

After the war was over the five lines between Buffalo and Chicago 
along the southern shores of Lake Erie reached a common agreement 



ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION 395 

in the formation of the Lake Shore in 1867, and in the same year two 
roads, for a long time bitter rivals, combined and formed the Boston 
and Albany. The New York Central and the Hudson River combined 
in 1868. These consolidations were not accomplished without bitter 
opposition from the general public. The proposed capital of the new 
Boston and Albany, $15,000,000, was denounced in Massachusetts as 
"monstrous" and " unheard of," a decided menace to the politics of the 
state. 

Another typical example of the combination of capital was the 
progress of the Western Union Telegraph Company. There were over 
fifty telegraph companies in the United States in 1851, 
when the Western Union was formed to control a line of^thl'^West- 
from Buffalo, New York, to Louisville, Kentucky. In ern Union 
its first five years the new company absorbed eleven company, 
small lines in the state of Ohio alone. Growth and con- 
solidation reached its climax during the "telegraph fever," 1861-1865. 
Western Union interests completed the first telegraph to the Pacific 
in the late fall of 1861, and soon, by absorbing numerous small com- 
panies, that enterprising company extended its lines to the Atlantic. 
At the same time rival companies stretched at least fifteen thousand 
miles of new vvires, but in 1866 the Western Union, by taking over its 
leading rivals, placed twenty-five thousand more miles of wire under its 
control. A monopoly was created with huge profits to the company, 
but it was a monopoly which was at that time quite generally wel- 
comed, for the public rejoiced in the increased uniformity of the 
service secured by the destruction of competition. 

The same consolidation of competing units went on among manu- 
facturing concerns. The world's greatest monopoly, the Standard 
Oil Company, was initiated in 1867 by the union of five consoiida- 
independent refineries and rapidly took over almost the tion in manu- 
whole of the oil industry of the country. Thousands of ^^ ""ng. 
other separate manufacturing industries were swallowed up in like 
manner by larger organizations. 

In accounting for the formation of the Standard Oil Company, John 
D. Rockefeller, its head, testified before the United States Industrial 
Commission as follows: " The cause leading to its formation Exoianation 
was the desire to unite our skill and capital in order to of the 
carry on a business of magnitude and importance in place °^°^®™®'^ • 
of the small business that each separately had theretofore carried 
on." This was the keynote in other lines of industry as well. An 
internal revenue tax on sales, imposed as a war measure, hastened 
the movement along many lines. The cotton manufacturer, whose 



396 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

business it was to spin cotton into yarn, upon selling his finished product 
paid a tax, as did the weaver, the dyer, etc. If the cotton manufacturer 
could afford to enlarge his plant in order not only to spin but also to 
weave, or if he could unite his business with that of some weaver, he 
escaped one of these taxes and if he could take in a dye-works, he 
escaped another. Here was one force driving small concerns together. 
Then, too, as the country became more widely settled the commercial 
world felt the need of uniformity in the transaction of business on a 
large scale and over a large area; and it was moved also by the necessity 
of lowering the expense of management and eliminating the low rates 
of profit resulting from "cut-throat" competition, as the manufacturing 
establishments the country over became able, because of improved 
transportation facilities, to vie with one another in the same markets. 

The abundance of ready capital and the growth of large fortunes 
during the Civil War added to the tendency to consolidate. There 
The erowth were men with money to finance large undertakings. In 
of large the middle of the war the New York Independent asserted 

o nes. tlig^x^ twenty years back there had not been five men in 

the whole United States worth as much as $5,000,000 and not 
twenty worth over $1,000,000, but that in 1864 there were in New 
York alone several hundred men worth $1,000,000 and some worth 
$20,000,000. 

In spite of the justification for the changes going on, the friends 
of the competitive system of industry sounded a warning that con- 
The dangers solidation, unless checked, would lead to monopoly and to 
of monopoly, j^j^g high prices that only a monopoly can impose. 

Rapid construction of new transportation lines accompanied the 
consolidation of lines already constructed. In the eight years after 
Rapid ^^^ close of the war, railroad construction was as exten- 

railroad sive as in the previous thirty- five years, the 35,000 miles 

construe ion. ^£ jj^^^ ^^ operation in 1865 reaching 70,000 in 1873. 
Even the astonishing record of the decade of the fifties was eclipsed. 

A most important step in national development was the completion 
of the first railroad to the Pacific coast, the Union Pacific, by far the 
The Union longest line of transportation in the country and the 
Pacific largest system under one management. The secession 

^'^^ ' of the Southern States and the ensuing war conditions 

had added emphasis to the demand for this road, to bind together the 
West and the East and by closer commercial relations render the Pa- 
cific States an integral part of the Union. Congress sanctioned the 
line in 1862 and made a grant to it of $50,000,000 in United States 
bonds and 20,000,000 acres of public lands to assist in paying the cost 



ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION 



397 



of construction. The first rails were laid in 1864. After peace was 
declared the reunited country followed the progress of the road with 
extraordinary interest, just as it had watched the progress of the 
Erie Canal forty years before. Along hundreds of miles of the way 
the laborers required the protection of soldiers against the Indians, 
and on many occasions the laborers themselves were forced to turn 







The Completion or the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroad 



soldiers. At Ogden, Utah, where the eastern and western construction 
gangs came together in 1869, a silver sledge hammer was used to drive 
the last three spikes, one of gold, silver, and iron from Arizona, one of 
silver from Nevada, and one of gold from California; connecting tele- 
graph wires, which had succeeded in spanning the continent before the 
railroads, reported the last strokes in most of the cities from the Atlantic 
to the Pacific. Although at present there are seven transcontinental 
roads, this first road to the Pacific coast was a great achievement for 
the time and the nation's greatest internal improvement up to that 
day. The first telegraph to the Pacific went into operation in 1861, 
but the "pony express," which started at about the same time, re- 
mained the only means of carrying the mail over the plains till the 
advent of the railroad. 

When Morse invented the electric telegraph he predicted that his, 
invention would some day be used to carry messages under the water 
as well as over the land. Progress came slowly. At first cables under 



398 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

water were stretched for short distances in rivers and harbors, then 
for longer distances, as for instance, for some hundreds of miles in the 
Mediterranean Sea from the Island of Malta to Alexandria in Egypt. 
To Cyrus W. Field is due the credit for bringing to completion the 
The Atlantic great enterprise of laying a submarine telegraph cable 
cable. beneath the Atlantic from Europe to America. The first 

Atlantic cable was stretched in 1858, but ceased to work after a few 
weeks; the Civil'War intervened, and ultimate success was not achieved 
till 1866. From that time on, Europe and America have been in instant 
communication. The Western Union Telegraph Company was at the 
same time engaged in stretching its wires along the shores of the Pa- 
cific north from San Francisco to Alaska, whence a short cable was to 
lead to Asiatic Russia or Siberia and overland wires to St. Petersburg 
and Western Europe. This enterprise was never finished, for the cable 
under the Atlantic to carry messages between the two hemispheres was 
completed first; but there was universal admiration for the daring of 
the telegraph company which conceived the project. 

A second characteristic of the economic life of the era succeeding 
the war was the preference of capital for the stock corporation, as a 
The growth form of business organization, to the partnership which 
of stock had prevailed when economic units were smaller. There 

corpora ions. ^^^ been corporations in colonial times, such as the 
London and Plymouth companies, the Massachusetts Bay Company, 
and the Hudson Bay Company. In Washington's day and later there 
were turnpike and canal corporations, and after 1830 railroad cor- 
porations. By 1865 corporations were spreading rapidly throughout 
the whole industrial world, especially to mining and manufacturing 
enterprises. 

A corporation is usually composed of more members than a partner- 
ship; its life does not depend upon the life of its original members, while 
Character- ^ partnership continues only so long as its members 
istics of survive; and in a corporation the will of a majority con- 

corpora ions. j^j.Qjg^ whereas a partnership is usually governed by the 
unanimous voice of the partners. The affairs of a stock corporation 
are governed by a small board of directors, acting for the shareholders. 
For the payment of the debts of a corporation the members are gen- 
erally liable for no more than the amount of their stock, while a partner 
is usually liable for all the debts of the firm. The stock of a corpora- 
tion is divided into shares, which the shareholders may sell at will, 
while the transfer of an interest in a partnership usually requires the 
consent of all the partners. 

As its name indicates, a stock exchange is a place where stocks, 



ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION 399 

that is, shares in a corporation, may be exchanged. Exchanges had 
existed before 1861, but during the war they enlarged The stock 
their operations tremendously and assumed great impor- exchange, 
tance in the industrial age following. The shares of the new corpora- 
tions found their way to the exchanges, where, in the prevailing spirit 
of speculation during the war period, they changed hands rapidly. 

The extension of corporate control of industry had pronounced 
effects in the labor world. The close personal relationship between 
the single owner of a small manufacturing concern or the 
few members of a partnership, on the one hand, and the bug^j^ ^ °* 
artisans on the other hand, was disappearing. There corporation 
was instead the divided ownership of shareholders, who ^orid. "" 
bought and sold their shares in a more or less gambling 
spirit, might own shares in numerous concerns, often lived far away 
from the factory, and had no personal knowledge of factory conditions 
and no personal interest in the factory except as it furnished them 
dividends. Unlike the individual owner, who in the management of 
his small factory looked to his own interests and to the closely allied in- 
terests of his men, the corporate board of directors looked mainly in the 
other direction toward the interests of the impersonal, unsympathetic 
shareholders. Directors, appointed by thousands or tens of thousands 
of shareholders clamoring for dividends and dividends alone, can 
rarely take the personal interest in the workmen exhibited by the 
former partnerships. 

Factory conditions changed under the new regime. The company 
boarding house, the company store, and payment in store "orders," 
which, when administered by the individual owners q, . 
before corporations became common, were often beneficent factory 
institutions, gradually changed in nature under the control "^"^ itions. 
of directors, until they were generally discarded through the active 
opposition of the men themselves. Corporations, therefore, were they 
railroad, manufacturing, mining, or petroleum companies, contributed 
powerfully toward widening the chasm between capital and labor. 
The very size of the corporation, too, its increased capital and greater 
power in the industrial world, constituted a menace to labor unknown 
in the days of partnerships. As industrial corporations tightened their 
hold on modern business in the years after 1865, the estrangements 
between capital and labor went on increasing. Quarrels over hours, 
rates of wages, and what not, were only secondary to this fundamental 
cause of grievance, corporate control of industry; and the only resort 
of the laborers was to band themselves together for united remon- 
strance. 



400 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

Few of the labor unions of the thirties survived in 1861, but the 
movement toward such organizations which set in again during the 
war went on increasing after the war and survives to the present day. 
The progress ^ number of the national unions now existing were 
of labor formed before 1870. Over the local and national unions 

unions. ^£ ^^^ single trades stood the Knights of Labor, a secret 

order formed in 1869, for the purpose of protecting the interests of 
workmen of different trades, on the principle that an injury to one 
was the concern of all. By 1880 the Knights numbered 140,000^ 
though not all its members were wage earners, for men of all occupa- 
tions, except saloon keepers, gamblers, bankers, and lawyers, were 
admitted as members. The new organization sought "to secure to the 
workmen the full enjoyment of the wealth they create and sufficient 
leisure to develop their intellectual, moral and social faculties." This 
organization and the labor movement as a whole were not active in 
politics for a number of years. 

Economic conditions following the war presented a third charac- 
teristic, which, though uncommendable, must be recognized. Corrup- 
Corruption ^^^^ ^^^ rampant in both business and politics. Probably 
in business the decade between 1865 and 1875 was the most cor- 

po 1 ics. Y-^^pi fn the history of the country. Financial circles 
were stirred by a long series of defalcations and embezzlements. 
On the stock exchange the motto "Get rich quick" was never so 
loosely and so recklessly carried out. One broker. Jay Gould, con- 
trived to make $12,000,000 from questionable manipulation of the 
stock of the Erie Railroad, and on another occasion, on " Black Friday," 
September 24, 1869, he made at least $11,000,000 more by still more 
questionable speculation in gold. The Credit Mobilier scandal, in 
connection with the letting of contracts for the Union Pacific Rail- 
road, involved several high officials in the national government. 

There was widespread corruption in official life in both state and 
nation. A Secretary of War, accused of letting fraudulent contracts 
Senator ^^ ^^^ department, found it necessary to resign in order 

Hoar's to escape removal from office. At the trial of this official 

arraignmen . j^gfoj-e the United States Senate, Senator Hoar of Massa- 
chusetts made the following sad arraignment of contemporary public 
life: "My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one, 
extending little beyond the duration of a single term of senatorial of- 
fice; but in that brief period I have seen five judges of a high court of 
the United States driven from office by threats of impeachment for cor- 
ruption or maladministration. I have heard the taunt from friendliest 
lips, that when the United States presented herself in the East to take 



ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION 401 

rp.rt with the civilized world in generous competition in the arts of life, 
the only product of her institutions in which she surpassed all others 
beyond question was her corruption. I have seen in the state in the 
Union foremost in power and wealth, four judges of her courts im- 
peached for corruption, and the political administration of her chief 
city became a disgrace and a byword throughout the world. I have seen 
the Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs in the House, now 
a distinguished member of this court, rise in his place and demand the 
expulsion of four of his associates for making sale of their official 
privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our great military 
school. When the greatest railroad of the world, binding together 
the continent and uniting the two great seas which wash our shores, 
was finished, I have seen our national triumph and exultation turned 
to bitterness and shame by the unanimous reports of three commit- 
tees of Congress . . . that every step of that mighty enterprise had 
been taken in fraud. ... I have heard that suspicion haunts the 
footsteps of the trusted companions of the President." 

The city, whose municipal administration Senator Hoar called a 
''disgrace and a by- word throughout the world," was New York. 
This great metropolis was in the hands of one of the .pj^g i-^gg^ 
worst political rings in the history of that or of any other ring in 
city. William M. Tweed, leader of Tammany Hall, the ^^ °^ 
regular organization of the Democratic party in that city, was the 
absolute boss of the city, and his corrupt rule cost the public hundreds 
of millions of dollars. In the construction of the county courthouse, 
begun during the war, to cost $250,000, $10,000,000 was consumed, 
while the debt of the city mounted in two years to $80,000,000, and the 
tax-payers had little to show for their money. The stealings of Tweed 
and his confederates were variously estimated at from $50,000,000 to 
$200,000,000. Tweed was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison, 
and although he escaped he was recaptured and died in prison. 

For a third time, the same general set of causes which had led to 
economic disaster in 1837 and 1857 asserted themselves and prosperity 
gave way to the panic of 1873. Reckless speculation on The panic 
borrowed money, construction of railroads, and the °^ ^^'^^• 
organization of other enterprises beyond the immediate needs of the 
country, had gone too far. In September, 1873, a prominent banking 
house of Philadelphia, which had invested too heavily in the projected 
second railroad to the Pacific, known as the Northern Pacific, closed 
its doors. The next day, September 19, was a second Black Friday on 
the New York Stock Exchange. The favorite stocks, "New York 
Central," "Erie," "Western Union," fell with a crash ten to forty 



402 



AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 



points, in a perfect pandemonium of tumult and excitement. All 
over the country securities were rushed to the market at greatly- 
reduced prices, credit business was refused, and debtors were pressed 
for payment; prices of agricultural products dropped, factories were 
shut down, and corporations went to the wall. It was the first financial 
panic in which the stock exchange played an important part. 

In 1876 there was held at Philadelphia a great exposition to cele- 
brate the centennial of the nation's independence; and the encouraging 

demonstration there made of the foundations on which 
The 
Centennial the industrial life of the United States rested, proved a 

Exposition at strong factor in hastening the recovery of business from 

Philadelphia. '^ . ri-rr .1 1 

the depression of the panic. In four months nearly 
10,000,000 people passed through the gates to behold the wonderful 

achievements of human industry 
and invention in agriculture, min- 
ing, transportation, and manufac- 
turing. Americans saw at the 
exposition for the first time the 
bicycle, imported from Europe, 
and the first form of the useful 
American invention of Alexander 
Graham Bell, then known as the 
"lovers telegraph," but within 
another year perfected as the 
modern telephone. A wave of 
practical invention was sweeping 
over the country. The Westing- 
house airbrake for railroad trains, 
the typewriter, the automatic 
binder on reaping machines, 
fountain pens, and the Bessemer 
steel process from Europe were 
still new. In 1877 Thomas A. 
Edison gave to the world the 
phonograph, in 1879 the mega- 
phone and the incandescent electric light, and in 1882 the present 
electric trolley cars; and to him must also be credited various improve- 
ments in the telegraph, and many other later inventions, including the 
moving picture machine. The electric arc light was produced by 
Charles F. Brush in 1879. The linotype for setting type was per- 
fected by O. Mergenthaler in 1885. 




Thomas A. Edison 



ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION 



403 



THE FRONTIER 

Outside the industrial centers of the East, on the frontier lands of 
the middle and far West, less economic readjustment was necessary 
during and after the war. The statesmen at the head of 
the government in Washington, even while the Civil War 
was raging, had not lost sight of the necessity of fostering 
the growth of the agricultural West as an important 
national asset. It sought to foster European immigration by the 



Congres- 
sional legisla- 
tion for the 
West. 




Wagon Train Across the Plains 



creation of the office of Commissioner of Immigration, and to make the 
public lands of the West more attractive to settlers by enacting a 
special law prohibiting slavery in all the territories of the United States, 
by passing the long-desired homestead law, which gave away farms of 
one hundred and sixty acres each to bona fide settlers, by providing 
funds for agricultural education in every state, and by liberally extend- 
ing the land grant railroad policy of the fifties to the Union Pacific and 
Northern Pacific Railroads and to various other roads that would 
penetrate the government lands. Finally a Commissioner of Agricul- 
ture was appointed to collect agricultural statistics and to promote 
agricultural development. 

This policy of the government was preeminently successful. Even 
the war on the southern battle fields put little stop to the migration of 
population across the plains, and after the war the movement went on 



404 



AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 



at a rate theretofore unknown. In the typical war year of 1864 one 
M" ti n hundred and fifty thousand people crossed the great plains. 



across the 
plains 



From Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the Missouri River, one 
traveler during this year wrote as follows: "The migra- 
tion is said never to have been exceeded. When you approach this 
town the ravines and gorges are white with the covered wagons at 
rest. Below the town toward the river long wings of white canvas 
stretch away on either side into the soft green willows; at the ferry from 
a quarter to a half mile or more of teams all the time await their turn 
to cross. ... A large ferry plying rapidly all the day long makes 
no diminution of the crowd." With railroads radiating all over the 
West, the never-ending stream of settlers increased. 

Minnesota received statehood in 1858, Oregon in 1859, Kansas in 
New states 1 86 1, Nevada in 1864, Nebraska in 1867, and Colorado, 
in the West, ^j^g centennial state, in 1876. The growth of population 
in the Western States is shown in the following table: 





Made 

a 
State 


Population 


1850 


i860 


1870 


1880 


1890 


1900 


1910 


Texas 

California 

Minnesota .... 

Oregon 

Kansas 

West Virginia. . 

Nevada 

Nebraska 

Colorado 


1845 
1850 
1858 
1859 
1861 
1863 
1864 
1867 
1876 


212,000 

92,000 

6,000 

13,000 


604,00c 
379,000 
172,000 
52,000 
107,000 

6,Soo 
28,000 
34,000 


818,000 
560,000 
439,000 

90,000 
364,000 
442,000 

42,000 
122,000 

39,000 


1,591,000 
864,000 
780,000 
174,000 
996,000 
618,000 
62,000 
452,000 
194,000 


2,235,000 
1,213,000 
1,310,000 

317.000 
1,428,000 

762,000 

47,000 

1,062,000 

412,000 


3,000,000 
1,485,000 
1,750,000 

413,000 
1,470,000 

958.000 

42,000 

1,1,66,000 

339,000 


3,896,000 
2,377,000 
2,075,000 

672,000 

1 ,690.000 

1,221,000 

81,000 

1,192,000 

799,000 



The steady westward march of population was accompanied by 
the inevitable Indian massacres, which had characterized similar 
The Indian movements from the earliest days of American frontier 
Wars. building. During the second year of the war the Sioux 

Indians killed eight hundred men, women, and children in Minnesota, 
and destroyed property to the value of $5,000,000. Escaping punish- 
ment here, they pillaged in the Valley of the Missouri, where they lay 
in wait for immigrant bands, who were obliged to move under military 
escort. The Sioux went on the war-path again in 1868 on account 
of encroachment upon their lands in Dakota and Montana by the 
bands of immigrants on their way to the Montana gold fields, and for 
two years they continued to pillage and burn. They made their last 
stand under their chief, Sitting Bull, in 1876, at the battle of Little 
Big Horn in southern Montana, where General Custer and his band of 



ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION 



405 



two hundred and sixty men, sent against them, were annihilated. In 
1879 the Sioux accepted the yoke of the whites and entered upon the 
reservation prepared for them in southern Dakota. In New Mexico 
and Arizona, the Comanches and Apaches were long a source of trouble 
to the whites, but were finally put down. The Cheyennes and the 
Arapahoes were subdued at the Battle of the Washita in the present 
state of Oklahoma in 1868. In all these encounters with the red men 
in the sixties and seventies the whites, under Generals Hancock, Custer, 
Sheridan and Miles, of Civil War fame, resorted, perhaps of necessity, 
to great cruelty, and despite their depredations much sympathy for 
the Indians was aroused throughout the nation. General Miles has 
left it as his testimony that he had never known an Indian war in 
which the whites were not the aggressors. 

The Civil War, by taking the young men off to the camps and 
battle-fields, had rapidly popularized the use of labor-saving machinery 
as nothing had been able to popularize it before. Con- 
servative farmers, who, before the war, when labor was use of labor- 
cheap and plentiful, failed to see the advantages of the new saving 
machinery, after the outbreak of hostilities, when stared ^^^'^v- 

in the face by the possibility of losing their crops for want of labor, 
looked with eager interest at the new appliances. Said the editor of 
the Scientific American: "In conversation a few days since with a 
most intelligent western farmer he told us that manual labor was so 
scarce last autumn that but for horse rakes, mowers, and reaping 
machines one-half of the crops would have been left standing in the 
fields. This year the demand for reapers has been so great that 
manufacturers will not be able to fill their orders. Farming is com- 
paratively child's' play to what it was twenty years ago, before 
mowing, reaping, and other agricultural machines were employed. 
The severe manual labor of mowing, raking, pitching, and cradling is 
now performed by machinery operated by horse power, and man 
simply oversees the operations and conducts them with intelligence." 

The McCormick reaper, which appeared first in the thirties, was 
improved from time to time, till it not only gathered the grain but 
separated it into sheaves and bound the sheaves, at first Agricultural 
with wire, later with twine. Threshers, small in size machinery, 
and run by horse power, accomplished the same work as the present 
machines, though less effectively; the grain was threshed, cleaned, 
measured, and the straw stacked at one operation. There were re- 
volving horserakes, grain drills, two -horse cultivators, rotary spaders, 
mowers, and steel plows, all of which had been gradually coming into 
use since Andrew Jackson's time. 



4o6 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

Following the same tendencies that had produced the labor unions 
and the combinations of capital, organizations of farmers appeared, 
jjjg The society of Patrons of Husbandry was formed in 1867 

Granger to advance the interests of the farming classes and par- 

movemen . ticularly to secure lower rates of transportation. The 
society, made up of local lodges, or granges, admitted both men and 
women into its ranks. It was secret and was designed to advance the 
social welfare of the farming classes as well as to further their industrial 
interests, and, like the labor unions, it did not at first go into politics. 
Within eight years the society numbered 150,000 members, recruited 
from every section of the country. A similar organization, though 
not a secret order, known as the Farmers' Alliance, and more openly 
political, was formed in New York in 1873 and spread rapidly in the 
western part of the country, but it was not an important factor till 
near the close of the next decade. 

On the treeless and grassy plains of the West cattle-raising on 
extensive ranches came to rank with agriculture as an industry of 
The new importance. The raising of cattle had been an occupation 

cattle of frontiersmen from the very first. As civilization 

pushed westward, cattle raisers had been in the vanguard, 
but until the prairies of the interior were reached, the industry was 
small and rarely attempted to supply anything beyond local needs. 
The large ranches beyond the Mississippi, common by the latter half 
of the nineteenth century, did not have an eastern origin. These origi- 
nated rather in Mexico and spread northward, supplied by Mexican, 
and after the independence of Texas and its admission into the Union, 
by Texas, steers. The grasses of the plains were richer and sweeter, 
the cattle feeding on them larger and fatter, as the herds penetrated 
farther north. Uncle Sam's public lands were for the most part unoc- 
cupied and were free, or at least trespassing on them could not be 
stopped. So irresistible was the northward trend that in a few years 
after the Civil War not only Texas but also Kansas, Colorado, 
Nebraska, Dakota, Wyoming, Montana and parts of Utah, Nevada, 
Missouri, Iowa and Illinois were covered by immense herds. 

In 1857 Texas cattle began to be driven on foot overland to 
Kansas City and Chicago, mainly the latter city, in search of a 
The over- market. The war intervened to stop the drive, but in 
land drive. jg55 [^ began again, and the slaughter and dressing 
of cattle in the western cities quickly constituted a great industry. 
For hundreds of miles the long trails across the plains were dotted 
with herds of five or ten thousand cattle, all northward going; in 
1871, 600,000 cattle crossed the Red River on their way from Texas. 



ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION 407 

New trails were gradually developed; railroads came in a few years; 

and in the seventies and early eighties millions of cattle from the 

plains reached the western slaughter-houses. 

The cattle ranch was not limited to a few hundred acres, and it was 

not stationary like the homestead of the ordinary settler. Nor was 

it encumbered with bars and fences. Branded with the r. ■ *• 

Description 

owner s mark, which was usually respected as a full and of the 
complete title of ownership, the cattle roved free over ''^°'^^- 
loosely defined ranges hundreds of miles in extent. At the "round-up," 
which was "the harvest time of the range," it was the duty of the cow- 
boys and their ponies to search out the wanderers, gather them to- 
gether, take them on the long drive to market, and protect them from 
enemies and from their own stampedes. These operations sometimes 
lasted for several months, during which time the home ranch was 
deserted. 

Peace did not always reign on the ranges, which were so far removed 
from regularly administered law that order was enforced only by 
the cooperation of the scattered ranchmen themselves, wars on the 
Droves of thousands of sheep soon came to appropriate ranges, 
their share of the free lands and free grass, and the ranchmen could not 
always get along amicably with the sheep herders. The ranchmen 
themselves often waged small civil wars with one another over cattle- 
stealing, the misappropriation of brands, the extent of the ranges, and 
other such matters as were bound to arise. 

Profits were large, and the industry for a time received a tremendous 
impetus. Cattle bought for a few dollars, raised in vast numbers, fed 
on free fodder, and needing but few men to attend them, p 
could be sold in several years for four or five times their of the 
original cost. Conservative capital in the United States ^^^'^ ^^' 
and even from other lands poured into the industry, and many young 
men from the Eastern States, attracted by the prospects of wealth 
and by the sturdy independent life of the ranchmen, went into the 
cattle business. 

Up to 1 86 1 the slaughter and dressing of hogs, cattle, and sheep, 
and the preparation of meat products for the market had been on a 
comparatively small scale, and had been confined, with j^^^^ nack- 
a few exceptions, almost entirely to the farms and to ing in the 
small country towns; but in the course of the war, on "^®^' 
account of the closing of the Mississippi and the consequent diffi- 
culties of marketing the large corn crops, the droves, herds and flocks 
of the Northwest increased rapidly, and their chief sale was found 
in the western cities, where the number of slaughter-houses rapidly 



4o8 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

increased. In i860, 270,000 hogs were packed in Chicago, but in a single 
year during the course of the war 900,000. The industry expanded in 
other western centers also, though on a smaller scale than in Chicago, 
where one-third of the hog-packing industry of the country was cen- 
tered. The sudden centralization of what before the war had been a 
domestic industry of the farms, was one of the marked changes wrought 
by the war in the industrial life of the nation. 

An activity of the plains which reached its height about 1870 was 
the buffalo hunt. Overland travelers west of the Mississippi were 
-j.jjg astounded at the tens of thousands of buffaloes which 

buffalo seemed to envelop them. Bufifaloes moved, as no other 

animals ever have, in great multitudes, covering many 
square miles. In swimming the rivers they often obstructed boats, 
on the plains they overwhelmed travelers, and in passing railroad 
tracks they often rushed headlong into moving trains and threatened 
to derail them. Many a railroad train was stopped to allow the herd 
to pass. By a strange mixture of characteristics, fierce and strong as 
he was, the buffalo was one of the most stupid animals known to man. 
He was slow in scenting danger, and would sometimes stand quietly 
by with no other apparent emotion than that of stupid wonder, while 
his companions in the herd were slaughtered by the hundred. A 
traveler of 1868, crossing the plains of Kansas for one hundred and 
twenty miles, wrote: "We passed through an almost unbroken herd of 
buffalo. The plains were blackened with them, and more than once 
the train had to stop to allow unusually large herds to pass." The 
same traveler, in 1872, in commenting on a journey of one hundred 
miles in Indian Territory, wrote: "We were never out of sight of 
buffalo." 

The construction of the Union Pacific railroad ultimately divided 

the buffaloes into a northern and a southern herd; and a competent 

An estimate authority has estimated that in 1871 the southern herd 

of their numbered above 3,000,000 animals, possibly over 4,000,- 

numbers. 

000. 

Captain John C. Fremont of the United States army, in the report 

of one of his exploring expeditions across the plains in the forties, 

described a buffalo hunt in the following graphic Ian- 
Fremont s ... ... . , , 11, 1 

description guage: As we were ridmg quietly along the bank, a grand 

buffai h t l^srd of buffalo, some seven or eight hundred in number, 

came crowding up from the river, where they had been 

to drink, and commenced crossing the plain slowly, eating as they 

went. ... It was too fine a prospect for the chase to be lost, and, 

halting for a few moments, the hunters were brought up and sad- 



ECONOMIC RECONSTRUCTION 409 

died, and Kit Carson, Maxwell, and I started together. They were 
somewhat less than a half-mile distant, and we rode easily along until 
within about three hundred yards, when a sudden agitation, a wavering 
in the band, and a galloping to and fro of some who were scattered 
along the skirts gave us the intimation that we were discovered. . . . 
A crowd of bulls, as usual, brought up the rear, and every now and 
then some of them faced about, and then dashed on after the band a 
short distance, and turned and looked again, as if more than half 
inclined to stand and fight. In a few moments, however, during 
which we had been quickening our pace, the rout was universal, and 
we were going over the ground like a hurricane. When at about 
thirty yards, we gave the usual shout (the hunter's pas de charge), and 
broke into the herd. We entered on the side, the mass giving away 
in every direction in their heedless course. Many of the bulls, less 
active and less fleet than the cows, paying no attention to the ground, 
and occupied solely with the hunter, were precipitated to the earth 
with great force, rolling over and over with the violence of the shock, 
and hardly distinguishable in the dust. We separated on entering, 
each singling out his game. 

"My horse was a trained hunter, famous in the West under the 
name of Proveau, and with his eyes flashing, and the foam flying from 
his mouth, sprang on after the cow like a tiger. In a few moments he 
brought me alongside of her, and, rising in the stirrups, I fired at the 
distance of a yard, the ball entering at the termination of the long hair 
and passing near the heart. She fell headlong at the report of the gun, 
and, checking my horse, I looked around for my companions. At a 
little distance. Kit was on the ground, engaged in tying his horse to 
the horns of a cow which he was preparing to cut up. Among the 
scattered bands, at some distance below, I caught a glimpse of Max- 
well; and while I was looking, a light wreath of white smoke curled 
away from his gun, from which I was too far to hear the report. Nearer, 
and between me and the hills, toward which they were directing their 
course, was the body of the herd, and giving my horse the rein, we 
dashed after them. A thick cloud of dust hung upon their rear, 
which filled my mouth and eyes, and nearly smothered me. In the 
midst of this I could see nothing, and the buffalo were not distin- 
guishable until within thirty feet. They crowded together more 
densely still as I came upon them, and rushed along in such a compact 
body, that I could not obtain an entrance — the horse almost leaping 
upon them. In a few moments the mass divided to the right and left, 
the horns clattering with a noise heard above everything else, and my 
horse darted into the opening. Five or six bulls charged on us as we 



4IO AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

dashed along the line, but were left far behind; and singling out a cow, 
I gave her my fire; but struck too high." . . . 

Indians and whites alike joined in the slaughter of the buffalo, 
sometimes out of sheer delight in the hunt, sometimes to secure robes 
The slaughter and meat. After the railways gave ready access to the 
of the herds, hunting-grounds, the rate of extermination was rapidly 
accelerated. The hunt in the south reached its height in 1872-1873, 
during which two years it has been estimated that over 3,000,000 
animals were slaughtered in the southern herd alone. By the end 
of 1874 this herd had ceased to exist. The northern herd, which 
was somewhat smaller, survived till 1S83. In one year no fewer than 
five thousand white hunters were on the northern range, some killing 
as many as 2500 or 3000 animals apiece. Straggling buffaloes lingered 
a few years after the herds were wiped out, but by the twentieth 
century wild buffaloes on the plains were creatures of the past. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Paxson, Last American Frontier: S. Bowles, Across the Continent; R. P. Porter, 
The West from the Census of iSSo; R. L. Stevenson, Across the Plains. 

SPECLAL TOPICS 

1. The Union Pacific Railroad. Rhodes, United States, VII, 1-14; Paxson, 
Last American Frontier, 211-224, and 324-339; Epochs, IX, 122-130; J. P. Davis, 
Union Pacific Railroad; Sparks, Expansion, 366-375. 

2. The Atlantic Cable. Foster, Century of Diplomacy, 403-404; Epochs, IX, 
70-82; H. M. Field, Story of the Atlantic Cable. 

3. The Cattle Ranch. E. Hough, Story of the Cowboy; T. CARSOi>r, Ranching, 
Sport, and Travel, 42-225; J. G. McCoy, Historic Sketches of the Cattle Trade; W. 
Shepard, Prairie Experiences. 

4. Buffaloes. W. T. Hornaday, Extermination of American Bison, Report of 
Smithsonian Institution, 1887, II, 367-548; Hulbert, Historic Highways, I, loi- 
127; Thwaites, Ed., Early Western Travels, XXXI, Index, under Bison. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

In what sense is it true to say that the Civil War introduced a new era? Summarize 
the political and economic results of the war. Was the consohdation of capital wholly- 
good or wholly bad? Did labor in the North gain or lose by the war? Why did the 
war bring corruption in politics? Why was it good statesmanship to foster the 
growth of the West during the war? Did this policy not mean a drain of men away 
from the army? Why did labor-saving machinery come into wider use during the 
war? Why was the creation of the large cattle ranches delayed till the close of the 
war? What was the Credit JNIobilier? 



CHAPTER XXV 
POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 

METHODS OF RECONSTRUCTION 

Andrew Johnson, to whom the presidency fell at the death of Abra- 
ham Lincoln, had received the vice-presidential nomination in 1864 
as a loyalist of Eastern Tennessee, which class Lincoln Andrew 
felt should be recognized. He had had more experience Jo^i^son. 
in public affairs than had Lincoln, having passed through various town 
and state offices to the governorship of Tennessee and membership 
successively in both branches of Congress, but he lacked Lincoln's 
qualities of tact, patience, gentleness, good judgment, and ability to 
get along with men. He quarreled almost continuously with Congress 
and with his party throughout his administration. 

The year 1865 was one of high tension in the public mind. The 
surrender of Lee and the end of the war, followed by the assassination 
of President Lincoln, the pursuit, capture, trial, and The exciting 
execution of the conspirators, keyed the nation to an y®^ °^ ^^^^• 
extreme pitch of excitement. In the bitterness. President Davis, 
pursued and imprisoned, was charged not only with treason but 
with having had a part in the death of the President of the United 
States. The impressive review of the victorious armies at Washington 
and the return of the men to peaceful pursuits; the sad return of the 
southern veterans to their desolate homes, the sensational trial, con- 
viction, and execution of the keeper of the Confederate prison at 
Andersonville, Georgia, marked the end of military hostilities, while 
the abolition of slavery by state after state in the South, the formal 
repeal of the once proud ordinances of secession by the same states, 
the repudiation of their Confederate debts and their knocking at the 
doors of Congress in Washington for readmission to the Union, inau- 
gurated a political readjustment that promised at first to be speedy. 
Ex-members of the Confederate Congress, ex-generals from the Con- 
federate army, and even ex- Vice President Stephens sought member- 
ship in the Congress of the United States. The prospect of completing 
the restoration of the Union so quickly and so peacefully at the end 
of the year of excitement at first aroused great popular enthusiasm. 

411 



412 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

The work of bringing the Southern States back into the Union was 

called Reconstruction. How it was to be done and under what terms 

were topics of discussion in the North as soon as seces- 

dential plan sion became an accomplished fact, and during the four 

of Recon- years of war the discussion continued. Unfortunately the 
struction. •' 

Constitution was silent on the subject. Quite naturally 

the makers of the Constitution did not recognize in that document 
the possibility of the destruction of the Union which they sought to 
cement, and made no provisions for the reunion of estranged sections. 
President Lincoln worked out a plan, which in general President 
Johnson adopted as his own, by which any Southern State, with the 
concurrence of at least ten per cent of the voters in that state in 
i860, was to be allowed to form a new state government and to elect 
members to Congress, upon its formal recognition of the abolition 
of slavery. During the lifetime of Lincoln, Tennessee, Arkansas, 
and Louisiana were so organized, and it was under the Lincoln- 
Johnson plan that the remainder of the Southern States were acting 
in 1865. 

The one thing that remained to complete the restoration, was the 
formal assent of Congress itself to receive the representatives of the 
restored states into its membership. This consent 
refuses^fo Congress refused to give until the Southerners, in addi- 
accept the tion to freeing the blacks, should go further and pass 
plan. laws to guide and protect the ex-slaves in their newly 

acquired freedom. Here Congress and the President 
parted ways. The President insisted that the states should be let 
alone in their dealings with the freedmen, while Congress favored na- 
tional supervision of the matter. The Southern States made the 
terrible mistake of antagonizing the branch of the national government 
that had the last word on the question of their readmission into the 
Union. In the face of the wishes of Congress, state after state in the 
South not only refused to give the blacks any practical assistance, but 
passed new "black codes" denying them many of the privileges of 
freedom. Included in these codes were vagrancy laws, which reduced 
the negroes, who had no fixed place of abode and no regular work, to 
forced service for the whites who came forward and paid their fines. 
This was practically a restoration of slavery. Congress feared that if 
it did not intervene to check the reckless Southern legislation under 
the President's mild policy, the emancipation of the slaves, accom- 
plished at the cost of the war, would be practically brought to nought. 
The members of Congress, too, were jealous of the President because 
he had taken up the problem of Reconstruction without consulting 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 413 

them, and many allowed their personal antagonism to the President 
to set them in opposition to his measures. 

The Senate and the House of Representatives, therefore, before 
consenting to the admission of Southern members to Congress, passed 
two national laws to give to the negroes such protection 
as seemed to Congress necessary. One of these laws sionai plan 
enlarged the scope of the Freedmen's Bureau, a national °f Recon- 

1 • • 1 • r 1 , 1 1 11 1 struction, 

charity m the mterests of the blacks, and the other 
guaranteed to the unfortunates the civil rights denied them by the 
Southern States. The President, who did not weaken in his position 
that these matters were not properly within the power of the national 
government, vetoed both bills; and the exasperated Congress passed 
them over his veto. Congress then went further and put its ideas as 
to the civil rights of the negro into the more permanent form of the 
fourteenth amendment to the Constitution, in effect 1868, which dealt 
a final blow to the principles of the Dred Scott Decision by the 
declaration that all persons born in the United States, and subject 
to its jurisdiction, were citizens of the United States; and that no 
state should abridge the privileges of citizens nor deprive any person 
of life, liberty or property without due process of law, nor deny him 
the equal protection of the law. Tennessee alone accepted the 
amendment and was at once admitted back into the Union; the other 
Southern States refused. Angered again by the refusal, and encouraged 
by the support of the people who by this time had turned from Presi- 
dent Johnson and had registered their approval of the congressional 
plan of Reconstruction in the congressional elections of 1866, Congress 
imposed still harder terms. It set aside the Johnson state governments 
and enacted that the refractory states be divided into five military 
districts, each to be under the command of an officer of the army. 
The congressional leaders, Senator Charles Sumner of Massachu- 
setts and Representative Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania, were 
able men, who had rendered their country distinguished ^j^^ suffer- 
services, but in this crisis they proved visionary and ing of the 
impractical, and believed themselves justified in dis- °"* ' 
regarding actual conditions in the Southern States. In the first 
place, the whole South was suffering from abject poverty. Every 
dollar of the paper money of the Confederacy and every Confederate 
bond were worthless; every loan to the Confederate government 
was a total loss; and the thousands who had their money invested 
in slaves were ruined. Millions of dollars' worth of Southern prop- 
erty had been destroyed by the contending armies, and in some 
cases whole towns and cities had been laid in ashes. Many of the 



414 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

slaveholders, who had never worked with their hands, found themselves 
reduced to the necessity of working for their daily bread. "General 
Sherman shall not bring my daughters to the wash tub," declared 
one proud Southerner, typical of his class, and the efforts he made 
to keep his vow were pathetic. He tried to chop wood and to use the 
hoe, but with the weight of his years he proved almost as helpless as 
a babe. Yet he struggled on, as did many another unused to manual 
labor, for only their own hands kept them from starvation. In some 
instances the blacks in their freedom remained loyal to their old 
masters, and cheerfully performed their accustomed tasks. 

There was infinite humiliation to the whites in the fact that the 
soldiers used by the United States to carry out the military government 
Harsh of the recalcitrant states were largely ex-slaves. Clad 

regulations. jj^ ^j^g uniform of the United States and armed with 
muskets or swords, the former slaves would strut down the streets 
of the little town near the old home of plantation days, and the 
old master, meeting them, must get out of the way. The Southern 
veterans were not allowed to meet in reunion to talk over their war 
experiences and to sing the war songs. If they wore the old uni- 
forms with the Confederate buttons, the soldiers might throw them 
to the ground and snatch the buttons from them. All these indig- 
nities and more were heaped on the Southerners, when their situation 
was unfortunate enough at best. 

In order to shake off this military government and get back into the 
Union, the Southern States were obliged to comply with the harsh con- 
ditions set by Congress in the Reconstruction Act of 
of the con- March 2, 1867. Their new constitutions were to be 
gressionai framed by conventions of delegates elected by whites 
and blacks alike, except that those whites disfranchised for 
participation in the war could not take part ; each of the new constitu- 
tions was to contain a clause giving the elective franchise to blacks and 
whites on the same terms; and the fourteenth amendment must be 
accepted. Bitter conditions indeed; but seven of the Southern States 
soon complied, were admitted at once back into the Union, and with 
Tennessee took part in the presidential election of 1868. Early in the 
next administration the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution was 
passed, providing that the right to vote should be denied to no citizens 
of the United States on account of race, color, or previous condition 
of servitude. The last three states accepted the conditions of the 
Reconstruction Act, ratified the fifteenth amendment, and were 
restored to their position in the Union in time to take part in the 
presidential election of 1872. The negroes were now in possession of 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 



415 



full civil and political rights, and all the Southern States were restored 
to their old place in the Union. 

Such bitter feeling developed between the President and Congress 
over the question of Reconstruction that the House of Representatives 
in 1868, on the eve of the presidential campaign of that 
year, impeached President Johnson before the bar of the ment™?^^*^ 
Senate for his alleged refusal to obey the recently enacted President 
Tenure of Office Act and for other reasons. The Tenure of 
Office Act provided that the President, who made appointments with 
the consent of the Senate, might remove his appointees from office 
only with the consent of the same body. In spite of the act the 
President had removed Secretary Edwin M.- Stanton from the War 
Department. A two-thirds vote of the Senators against the President 
would have removed him from office, but he escaped conviction by 
one vote. Posterity may rejoice that the presidency was not degraded, 
yet many who believe that Johnson's plan of reconstruction was 
wiser than that of Congress, still hold him responsible for his trouble 
with that body, because in his quarrel with it he assumed that he was 
wholly in the right and refused to yield an inch. He was an obstinate 
man, unable either to bring men to his point of view or to accept theirs. 
Although President for almost four years, he was practically without 
power in legislation all that time, for there was a two-thirds majority 
opposed to him in both houses of Congress, ready on every occasion 
to override his veto. 

Since the memorable day at Appomattox, General Grant, as the 
North's greatest mihtary chieftain and most popular citizen, had 
loomed large as a possible presidential candidate, and the 
Republicans quite naturally gave him a unanimous dentiarnomi- 
nomination in 1868 on a platform indorsing the congres- nations of 
sional plan of Reconstruction. The Democrats, who 
were still suffering from the odium of having declared the war a failure 
in 1864, were in a difficult position. To restore the prestige of the 
party, the character and record of their new leader was of the utmost 
importance. There were three paths open to them. First, they 
might name a popular military hero from the ranks of their own party, 
like General Winfield Scott Hancock, or General Francis P. Blair, who 
would appeal to the war spirit. Second, they might pick a prominent 
man from the triumphant Republican party, like Chief Justice Salmon 
P. Chase or President Andrew Johnson, who would be willing to desert 
his own party and lead them; or third, they might nominate one of 
their own number, who had stood loyal to principle during the late 
war as a Peace Democrat. The last course was the most consistent 



4i6 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

with the Democratic record, but in view of the success of the war it was 
poor poUtics. Chase, who had been Lincoln's Secretary of the Treas- 
ury till the middle of the year 1864 and was now Chief Justice of the 
Supreme Court, was very anxious for the Democratic nomination, 
though he was criticized for lowering the dignity of the Supreme 
Bench by seeking political preferment. President Johnson, smarting 
under the humiliation of his quarrel with the Republican congressional 
leaders, looked to the Democrats as his only hope of vindication. 

Consistency triumphed over politics, and the Democratic nomina- 
tion, on a platform calling for the "immediate restoration of all the 
The result at States," was given to Horatio Seymour of New York, a 
the polls. peace man and governor of New York during the war. In 

the electoral colleges the vote stood 214 for Grant to 80 for Seymour. 
The Peace Democrat, as a vote getter, was no match for the nation's 
most popular military hero. The incubus of the war hung over 
the Democrats for years, and it is interesting in this connection 
to note their later record, that they were worsted at the polls 
in 1872 when they tried a member of the Republican party as 
their leader, in 1876 when they were led by another Peace Demo- 
crat, and in 1880 with a military hero as their candidate. Not till 
1884, when sectional bitterness had subsided and they were led by one 
who had taken no active part in the war or war politics, did they suc- 
ceed in electing their candidate. 

THE WORKING OF THE NEGRO STATE GOVERNMENTS 
IN THE SOUTH 

Because of natural modesty and reticence, General Grant shrank 
from the public gaze and from speech-making; of the arts of the 
President politician he had none, and he was a poor judge of men. 
Grant. jjjg knowledge of the law and government of the United 

States was meager, so that he was compelled to lean heavily 
upon friends and advisers, some of whom deceived him shamefully. 
The people, however, never forgot that, with Lincoln, Grant had 
been the savior of the Union, and they forgave him his political 
deficiencies. 

The most prominent topic before the people during these years was 
the actual working of the new state governments of the South in the 
Experiences hands of the negroes and their unprincipled white leaders. 
of South The experience of South Carolina may be taken as illus- 

trative of the working of the system. In the legislature 
of this state, 1868-1872, only twenty-two of the one hundred and fifty- 
five members could read and write; several could only write their 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 



417 



names, and forty-one signed their names with a cross mark. One of the 
ninety-eight negro members paid $83 in taxes, thirty together paid 
$60, and sixty-seven paid none; of the fifty-seven white members 
twenty-four paid no taxes. The only executive official of the state 
to pay taxes was the lieutenant governor. Yet these poverty stricken 
ignoramuses in one year levied $2,000,000 in taxes on the taxpayers 
of the state, most of whom were whites, and in four years ran the 
state $20,000,000 in debt. 




A Trial by the Ku Klux Klan 

The leaders of the blacks were in large part white men, either "car- 
pet-baggers" from the North, that is, adventurers who had packed 
all their belongings in a carpet-bag and had gone South ^^^ carpet- 
to seek their fortunes in corrupt politics, or "scalawags," 
that is, Southern whites, who from low motives so far 
betrayed their friends and neighbors as to help the 
negroes administer their criminal rule. 

The self-respecting Southerners, before Congress would allow them 
to vote, found two ways of fighting against their oppression. First, 
they formed secret societies to intimidate the black voters The Ku 
and frighten them away from the polls. The members Klux Klan. 
of the most notable of these societies, the Ku Klux Klan, would ride 



baggers and 

the 

scalawags. 



4i8 AN EIL\ OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

about among the negro huts at night, attired in fantastic costumes, to 
frighten the occupants and bind them by solemn oath to do the bidding 
of the whites. They resorted not only to actual violence but also to 
grotesque devices. Drawing up before one hut and requesting a drink 
of water, a horseman, who carried a tank concealed beneath his robes, 
would drink three bucketfuls of water, with the words, "That's good; 
the first I've had since Shiloh." Another would ask a frightened 
negro to hold his horse, and then taking off what was apparently his 
own head would bid the black hold that too. It was easy to frighten 
the superstitious ex-slaves. In 1870 and in 187 1 by "Force Acts" Con- 
gress adopted extreme measures against such methods and the Ku Klux 
Klan was broken up. 

Furthermore, the disfranchised whites, through their Northern 
friends, carried on a persistent agitation in Congress in favor of giving 
Congres- them back the suffrage. Congress, as we have seen, 

sionai agita- yielded but slowly, and lent its favor rather to the negroes 
oithe ^^°^ than to their old masters. It was not till 1872 that a law 
Southern vvas passed by Congress wholly removing from the South- 

ern whites the political disabilities resulting from the war. 
From that time the "carpet-bagger," the "scalawag," and the negro 
gradually lost their political domination. 

In the presidential campaign of 1872 opposition to General Grant 
broke out in the ranks of his own party and culminated in the forma- 
tion of the Liberal Republican Party with Horace Greeley, 
dentiai editor of the New York Tribune, as its candidate. The 

*^fT872^° Republicans renominated' Grant, and the Democrats 

joined with the bolting Liberal Republicans in support 
of Greeley. The followers of Greeley, among them such distinguished 
men as ex-Secretary Seward, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, ex-minis- 
ter to England Charles Francis Adams and United States Senator 
Charles Sumner, denounced corruption in public life and stood for 
a more liberal treatment of the Southerners and for a single term 
for the President. The rank and file of the nation, however, 
filled with the spirit of the common soldiers of the late war, refused 
to rally behind a candidate, no matter how distinguished, who, like 
Greeley, had signed the bail-bond of Jefferson Davis, but cast their 
ballots in overwhelming numbers for their beloved general, who was 
triumphantly reelected by a vote of 286 to 63 in the electoral colleges. 
The Prohibition party made its first appearance in this campaign, 
demanding the prohibition of the manufacture and sale of intoxicating 
liquors and the extension of suffrage to women, but it polled less than 
6,000 votes. The party of the Labor Reformers, the first modern 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 419 

attempt of labor to enter politics, polled a small vote, Wendell Phillips 
of Massachusetts, former abolition leader, being an ardent champion 
of the new party. 

THE END OF RECONSTRUCTION 

After the panic of 1873 had filled the country with an army of 
distressed, who, as is usual after great financial panics, laid the blame 
for their woes on the national administration, and after the 
corruption in public life had assumed the proportions of ^'^t^^'^h' 
a national scandal, a victory for the opposing Democratic presidential 
party in the presidential contest of 1876 seemed highly istg^^*^" °^ 
probable. The Democratic "tidal wave" in the con- 
gressional elections of 1874 increased the hopes of that party. The 
Democrats, encouraged, put forward their strongest leader, Samuel 
J. Tilden, governor of New York. As a lawyer of great ability Tilden 
had risen to the governorship by his activities in connection with the 
overthrow of the Tweed ring; and as governor he had brought himself 
into national prominence by his brilliant administration of state 
affairs. The demand of the Democrats was for reform. Their 
platform was a scathing arraignment of the party in power. After 
detailing the various charges of party and individual wrongdoing 
currently brought against the Republicans, it concluded: "The demon- 
stration is complete, that the first step in reform must be the people's 
choice of honest men from another party, lest the disease of one political 
organization infect the body politic, and lest by making no change of 
men or parties we get no change of measures and no real reform." 

James G. Blaine of Maine, former Speaker of the House of Repre- 
sentatives and then United States Senator, devised an effective weapon 
for the Republicans to use in parrying these thrusts. In 
eloquent speeches in Congress he deliberately set about Ucans tnthe 
to revive all the fiery passions of war time. He harked $1^1^^*^ °* 
back to the charge that Jefferson Davis was responsible 
for the terrible sufferings of the Union prisoners at Andersonville, 
Georgia, during the war. The Southerners replied in even greater 
passion, and allowed themselves to be lured farther and farther along 
by the wily Republican leaders, till the claim could be made that 
the "old rebel war spirit" still dominated the Democratic party. The 
ruse was wonderfully effective, the way was prepared for another presi- 
dential campaign on the old issues, while reform dropped more or less 
out of sight. The nomination of the Republicans did not fall to 
Blaine, who was the leading candidate, but to a dark horse, Ruther- 
ford B. Hayes of Ohio, who was serving his third term as governor 



420 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

of that state. The Liberal Republicans, discouraged by their poor 
showing in 1872, named no candidates. 

As in 1872, two small parties again placed candidates in the field, 
the Prohibitionists who polled 9,500 votes, and the Greenback party. 
Two small The party of the Labor Reformers of 1872 was extinct, 
parties. ^^t its followers were appealed to by the Greenbackers, 

who united farming and labor interests and called for an unlimited 
issue by the government of the greenback currency of the war 
times. This was the first entrance of the agricultural interests as 
such into politics. Peter Cooper, the Greenback candidate, polled 
82,000 votes, mainly in the West. 

When the returns of election day came in, no one could tell whether 
the Democratic or Republican electors had been chosen in the three 
states of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, while 
overlhe"*^ a dispute over the eligibihty of an elector complicated the 
election and result in Oregon. A majority in the electoral colleges at 
settlement. this time was 185, and without the disputed votes, 22 in 
all, Tilden had 1 84 to 1 63 for Hayes. One more vote would 
elect the Democratic candidate, while the entire 22 were necessary 
to give the election to the Republicans. Both parties claimed that in 
each of the three contested Southern States the election had gone in favor 
of its own electoral ticket. When the joint session of the two houses 
of Congress met formally to count the electoral votes, the roll of the 
states was called alphabetically and all went well till Florida was 
reached. There were two reports from that state. Then the ques- 
tion had to be met, who should decide whether the Democratic or the 
Republican electors had been chosen in Florida. The Constitution 
contained no explicit direction to govern the situation. It provided, 
that "The President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate 
and the House of Representatives, open all the certificates, and the 
votes shall then be counted." The point of difficulty was, who should 
do the counting. Did this function belong to the President of the 
Senate, or to the Senate, or to the House of Representatives, or to both 
Houses acting together? The difficulty was increased by the fact that, 
while the Senate was Republican, the House of Representatives was 
Democratic. A decision by Congress itself, with partisanship running 
high, was manifestly impossible. Accordingly Congress agreed on a 
special law for the immediate situation, which provided for the appoint- 
ment of an Electoral Commission of five Senators, five Representatives, 
and five members of the Supreme Court, who by the strictly partisan 
vote of eight to seven, decided each disputed case in favor of the Repub- 
licans. The joint session of Congress duly accepted the report of the 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 421 

Electoral Commission and gave the twenty-two votes to Hayes, who 

was declared elected at ten minutes past four o'clock on the morning 

of March 2, two days before inauguration, by an electoral vote of 185 

to 184. 

The tactics employed by Andrew Jackson and his followers against 

John Quincy Adams, 1825-1829, were now repeated by the Democrats 

against President Hayes. The new President was called 

the "Fraud President," "President de facto, ^^ etc. On cratic hostil- 

the day of his inauguration certain Democratic papers 'i^ to Presi- 
. . .-^^^,,. \ ^ dent Hayes. 

came out m mournmg, one m New York showmg a picture 

of the President with the word "fraud" marked across his face; the 
President was even greeted in public as "Old Eight to Seven," in jeer- 
ing reference to the vote of the Electoral Commission. 

The validity of President Hayes's title to the office was not 
left undisputed even after he was inaugurated. A committee of in- 
vestigation, appointed by the House of Representatives, investiga- 
uncovered undoubted electoral frauds on the part of the tions by 
Republicans in South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, ^^s^'^ss. 
which, it was supposed, would destroy the prestige of President Hayes 
and his party and lead to their certain defeat in 1 880. Driven to extrem- 
ity, the Republicans in self-defense turned on Tilden and the Democrats 
by publishing in the New York Tribune cipher telegrams sent through 
the Western Union Telegraph Company during the height of the 
late campaign, which tended to show Democratic frauds in the same 
states. At this sudden turn of the investigation Tilden appeared 
personally before the congressional committee and effectively dis- 
proved any personal share in the fraudulent practices; but the Republi- 
cans had gained their point, suspicion had been cast upon the leader 
of the rival party in retaliation for the charges against their own can- 
didate; and neither party could make political capital in 1880 out of 
the election frauds of 1876. Although each party undoubtedly prac- 
ticed fraud in the election of 1876, there is no reason to believe that 
either Hayes or Tilden was personally implicated, for the character 
of each was above reproach. 

One of the first acts of President Hayes was to withdraw the United 
States troops from South Carolina, Florida, and Louisiana, and with 
the departure of the troops the negro governments were 
supplanted by the rule of the whites, so that the episode draw^'^of" 
may fitly be regarded as the end of Reconstruction. The the troops 
political results of the President's act were disastrous to so™h. ^ 
himself, for, by his leniency toward the Southerners, he 
angered the "Stalwart" faction of his party, which desired still further 



422 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

punishment of the South and dubbed the President and his supporters, 
for their mild, half-way measures, "Half-Breeds." The "Stalwarts" 
were also estranged by the President's appointment of Daniel M. Key 
of Tennessee, an officer of the Confederate army, as Postmaster 
General. The country, however, was outliving the issues of the war. 
The day was passing when politicians could manufacture political 
capital out of the old passions of North and South. 

FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1865-1877 

The foreign questions arising between 1865 and 1877 were, as a rule, 

direct inheritances from the Civil War. Successful war had left in 

the North a feeling of triumph, and a bold, aggressive 

sion of the spirit was exhibited in the dealings of the United States 

French from ^j^}^ other nations. A foreign nation could no longer 
Mexico. ° °. 

safely defy the United States, as France had done m 

Mexico during the Civil War. When General Grant freed the 
hands of his country by the defeat of the armies of the Confed- 
eracy, the United States ordered fifty thousand troops to the banks 
of the Rio Grande River and demanded that the French leave the 
American continent. France complied, Maximilian was executed 
by the Mexicans, and the Monroe Doctrine was more strongly in- 
trenched than ever. To secure the withdrawal of the French from the 
continent without war was a distinguished diplomatic triumph for 
William H. Seward, who served as Secretary of State from the begin- 
ning of Lincoln's administration in 1861 to the end of Johnson's 
administration in 1869. 

Expansion of territory, which from 1840 to i860 had always pre- 
cipitated discussion of the extension of slavery, could now go on with- 
.pj^g out that menace. In 1867 by the purchase of Alaska 

purchase of from Russia, the United States acquired nearly 600,000 
square miles of new territory. The price paid was $7,200, - 
000. As in the case of the Louisiana purchase, numerous objectors 
arose, who in derision termed Alaska "Walrussia," "Our Great Na- 
tional Ice-House," etc.; but Secretary Seward, to whom is due the 
credit for the step, was not to be swayed from his course, and time 
has proved his wisdom. The furs, timber, fish, gold, iron, and other 
products of Alaska have proved to be worth hundreds of millions of 
dollars. The value of her output of all kinds from the time of her 
acquisition down to the end of igii reached $429,000,000. 

President Johnson and Secretary Seward made every effort, though 
without success, to induce Congress to consent to the purchase of the 
Danish West Indian islands of St. Thomas and St. John. Somewhat 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 423 

later President Grant also failed when he sought to lead Congress to 

annex the independent island republic of Santo Domingo, 

which had won its freedom from France soon after the of othe"'^^ 

separation of the United States from Great Britain, schemes for 

When the natives of the Samoan Islands in the South annexation. 

Pacific Ocean olTered the islands to the United States in 

1877, the offer was refused. The wave of national expansion which 

followed the Northern victory over Southern arms was at an end, and 

another was not to set in till the war with Spain in 1898. 

For her part in assisting the Confederate States during the late 
war through fitting out the Alabama and kindred Southern vessels, 
the victorious Union called Great Britain to strict ac- The treaty of 
count. After prolonged controversy and threats on either Washington, 
side, the demands of the United States were submitted by a treaty, or 
direct agreement of the two nations concerned, to the arbitration of 
a commission, which was to convene in Geneva, Switzerland; and 
both Great Britain and the United States agreed to regard the 
findings of the arbitrators "as a full, perfect and final settlement 
of all the claims." One arbitrator was appointed by the President 
of the United States, one by the Queen of England, and one each by 
the King of Italy, the President of Switzerland, and the Emperor 
of Brazil. The treaty of Washington, 1871, which provided for the 
arbitration, was a diplomatic victory for the United States, for in the 
rules contained in it to guide the arbitrators in their deliberations. 
Great Britain practically recognized at last as valid international law 
the principles of Washington's neutrality proclamation. Nations in 
general now accept these principles. 

For breaking these rules Great Britain was required by the tri- 
bunal to pay to the United States $15,500,000 in gold. The republic 

was gratified not only at the amount of the award, but _, _ 

1 1 r 11 T -11 1 The Geneva 

also at the fact that the verdict set right what they con- award on 

sidered an enormous grievance, while friends of peace ^^l^^^^'^'^^^ 

the world over welcomed the object lesson of peaceful 

arbitration as a means of settling international disputes. 

The treaty of Washington dealt also with other questions at issue 

between the two governments, such as fishery rights on the banks of 

Newfoundland, the navigation of the St. Lawrence and ^, ^ . 

Other tODlCS 

Lake Michigan, and the boundary between the domains in the 

of the two countries in the far Northwest, which had been Washington 

in dispute since the treaty regarding Oregon in 1846. The 

successful conclusion of the treaty reflected great credit on Grant's 

Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish. 



424 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

Secretary Fish also performed the service of bringing to an end a 

war between Spain and her old colonies, Peru, Chile, and Ecuador. 

"In the character of mediator," he used the good offices 

Successful • 

mediation of the United States to bring representatives of the four 
in South warring powers together in Washington, where they 

signed an armistice which they agreed not to break with- 
out three years' notice to the government of the United States. In the 
fifties the South American states had distrusted their sister republic of 
the north on account of the Mexican War and the Walker filibustering 
expeditions against Central America. A change of feeling took place 
during the Civil War, when efforts to extend slavery southward defi- 
nitely ceased, and a sense of common danger following the French 
invasion of Mexico began to draw North and South America together. 
This growing sympathy was increased by Secretary Fish's happy 
mediation. 

After the decade of intermittent excitement in the fifties over Cuba, 
which was marked by filibustering expeditions, the Black Warrior 
More trouble ^^^-ir, and the Ostend Manifesto, relations with the 
with Spain Spanish rulers of the island were peaceful for a few years. 
In 1868, however, a fierce war of independence broke out 
on the island, and President Grant would have recognized the Cubans 
as belligerents, as Spain had recognized the Confederates who rose 
against the United States, had he not been deterred by the counsel of 
Secretary Fish. Said the Secretary: "They (the Cubans) have no 
army, no courts, do not occupy a single town or hamlet, to say nothing 
of a seaport." In fact, they met few of the conditions required by 
international law as necessary prior conditions to a recognition of 
belligerency. 

In spite of the Secretary's efforts for peace the country became in- 
volved in difficulties with Spain by the Virginhis affair, and for a few 
The Virgin- weeks war seemed unavoidable. The Virginius, which was 
lus affair. g^ vessel owned by the Cuban insurgents fraudulently carry- 

ing the American flag, was captured on the high seas by the Spaniards 
while employed in aid of the rebellion, and after a trial in a Cuban port, 
over fifty of her crew were summarily executed. Among the victims were 
nine American and sixteen British subjects. Demands for reparation 
were made on Spain, which finally consented to restore the Virginius 
and her surviving passengers and crew to the United States, and to 
salute the flag of the United States unless Spain should prove that the 
Virginius had no right to fly the flag of the United States. The 
Attorney General of the United States was forced at last to admit that 
the vessel was not rightfully a United States vessel, and the Spanish 



POLITICAL RECONSTRUCTION 425 

salute to the American flag was dispensed with. The vessel was 
delivered up to the United States, but it is now generally admitted that 
Spain was in the right in seizing the ship, since the Virginius, belonging 
to unrecognized insurgents, was a pirate, subject to universal capture. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

C. R. Williams, Rulherjord Birchard Hayes; J. A. Woodburn, Thaddeus Stevens; 
M. Storey, Charles Sumner; Beard, Contemporary American History; J. G. Blaine, 
Twenty Years of Congress; C. F. Adams, Lee at Appomattox and Other Papers, 1-255; 
E. B. Andrews, Last Quarter Century; C. F. Adams, Jr., and H. Adams, Chapters of 
Erie and Other Essays: Harding, Orations, 421-442, and 467-488. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Impeachment of President Johnson. Rhodes, United States, VI, 
q8-i57; D. M. DeWitt, Lmpeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson; Hill, Decisive 
Battles, 135-174; Epochs, IX, 82-98; Harding, Orations, 443-466. 

2. The Purchase of Alaska. Rhodes, United States, VI, 211-214; Foster, 
Century of Diplomacy, 404-410; Contemporaries, IV, 547-549; Old South Leaflets, VI, 
133; Epochs, IX, 98-105; Bruce, Expansion, 166-186; Sparks, Expansion, 429-438. 

3. The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876. Rhodes, United 
States, VII, 227-291; Hill, Decisive Battles, 212-239; P- L. Haworth, The Hayes- 
Tilden Disputed Election; Epochs, IX, 200-208; E. Stanwood, Presidency, 356-393; 
C. R. Williams, Rutherford B. Hayes, I, 441-540. 

4. The South in Reconstruction Times. W. L. Fleming, Ed., Ku Klux Klan, 
also Documentary History of Reconstruction; J. W^ Garner, Reconstruction in Mis- 
sissippi; Why the Solid South? Various writers; Contemporaries, IV, 445-45,8, and 
478-500; Epochs, IX, 59-69, and 188-195. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERLAL 

A. W. Tourgee, FooPs Errand; J. C. Harris, Gabriel Tolliver; E. C. Stedman, 
Horace Greeley; L. W. Baldwin, Yankee School Teacher in Virginia. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

What were the mistakes of Andrew Johnson? Give a defense of Johnson. Is it 
fitting for the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court to seek a presidential nomination? 
Name the soldiers who have secured a presidential nomination. Why do the politicians 
prefer such men as candidates? Was the democratic nomination of Seymour in 1868 
politically wise? How do you account for the Liberal Republican movement? Why 
is the South "solid" for the Democrats? Look up in a recent life of Hayes what 
prom.ises the friends of Hayes made to the Southerners before the completion of the 
count of the electoral vote in 1877, and then draw a comparison between the presi- 
dential contest of 1824 and that of 1876. Account for the wave of territorial 
expansion that accompanied and followed the war. Compare this with the wave of 
territorial expansion during and after the Mexican War. What werQ the leading 
issues in current politics before the people in the presidential campaigns of 1868, 
1872, and 1876? 



CHAPTER XXVI 

AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 

INDUSTRL\L AND FINANCLAL PROBLEMS UNDER PRESIDENT 

HAYES 

Although organized labor had made a poor showing in the arena of 
national politics in 1872 and 1876, its struggle against capital did not 
Industrial lack aggressive force. Capital and labor were arrayed 

unrest. against one another as never before, and almost every 

great question of the Hayes administration touched upon some phase 
of the struggle. Industrial contests on a large scale stirred the country, 
and aroused universal apprehension when it was realized that the 
antagonisms of capital and labor, instead of dying out, were increasing 
in bitterness. 

Labor troubles in the past had usually arisen in times of prosperity, 
when prices were rising and wages were not keeping pace with prices. 
Railroad There were many strikes in the flourishing times of Andrew 

strikes. Jackson and in the days of high prices during the Civil 

War. In 1877 the largest strikes in the history of the country to that 
time took place for the opposite reason that, with falling prices, employ- 
ers were quite ready to grade wages according to profits, and were 
reducing wages on every hand. More than one hundred thousand 
employees of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and other railroads 
left their work rather than submit. In the crisis soldiers were massed 
in various railroad centers for the protection of property, and severe 
clashes took place between them and the strikers. The fiercest strug- 
gles occurred in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where blood was shed pro- 
fusely and millions of dollars' worth of property were destroyed. At 
the request of the governors of several of the states, the President 
took the unpopular step of sending national troops into the dis- 
turbed districts to keep order. 

The 82,000 votes polled by the Greenback party in the presidential 
election of 1876 were not a true measure of the discontent of the 
Agrarian agrarian classes in the middle and the late seventies. The 

discontent. Grangers, or Patrons of Husbandry, whose membership 
reached 150,000 in 1875, waged ardent warfare in behalf of the agrarian 

426 



AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 427 

interests. They were particularly roused to wrath against the rail- 
road corporations because of the latter 's custom of "watering their 
stock," that is, of issuing to the stockholders extra stock which did not 
represent actual paid-up value, and on the basis of this paying large 
dividends. Freight rates, they argued, which brought in revenue 
enough to pay handsome dividends on "watered" stock, were too high. 

The Western States proceeded against the offending corporations 
through their state legislatures, Illinois by regulating the charges 
in public grain elevators and Wisconsin by limiting the ^j^^ ^emla- 
passenger and freight rates of the railroads. The control tion of raii- 
of business corporations to this extent was an innovation 
in state legislation, and the action of the legislatures was brought 
before the Supreme Court of the United States by the complaining 
roads. In these "Granger Cases," as they were called, the court 
ruled that private property, such as ferries, wharves, hackney coaches, 
warehouses, and railroads, "affected with a public interest," that is 
"devoted to a public use," must submit to be controlled by the public 
for the common good, even to the extent of state regulation of their 
rates. In answer to the objection that the state legislatures might 
prescribe "unreasonable" rates, the court admitted that this was 
possible, but took the position that the remedy for such unjust legis- 
lation was not in the courts but in the state legislatures. "For pro- 
tection against abuses by legislatures," said the court, "the people 
must resort to the polls, not to the courts." Within less than twenty- 
five years the court reversed its position on this latter point, and held 
that it did have the power to review the economic legislation of the 
states, and, if necessary, to set it aside if unjust rates were imposed. 
The first part of the great decision, concerning the power of the various 
states to regulate the railroad rates, still stands, though it was some- 
what restricted by a decision of the court in the next decade. 

The congressional elections of 1878 also indicated the strength of 

the opposition to organized capital at the time. The defiant Grangers 

were exultant because of their victories over the railroads t.,,^ ^„„„^c 

ine congres- 

in the rate cases, and in the industrial centers labor had sionai eiec- 
not laid aside the asperities and hard feelings of the ^°"^ ° 
strikes and riots of 1877. Organized labor and organized agricultural 
interests, under these conditions, combined to strengthen the Green- 
back party on the common ground of hatred for conservative organized 
capital, and that party polled over 1,000,000 votes. The older parties 
were frightened at the waxing strength of the new movement. 

From the beginning of the year 1862 to January i, 1879, there was 
no gold or silver money in circulation. The people were using paper 



428 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

money entirely, both the well-secured national bank notes and the 
jjjg greenbacks. The value of both kinds of notes rose and 

greenback fell with the confidence of the people in the ability of 
currency. ^^^ government to redeem its promises in gold, and this 

fluctuation in value was made apparent to the general public in the rise 
and fall of prices. The constant shifting of values was acceptable to 
the speculators, and also to the debtor classes, who were glad to seize 
the opportunity to pay off their debts in cheap money. These advan- 
tages to certain classes had helped to bring into existence the Green- 
back party, with its platform in favor of making the greenbacks the 
permanent currency of the country and issuing them in unlimited 
amounts. Backed by conservative business interests. Congress 
successfully, though with great difficulty, withstood the demand. 
Instead of issuing more greenbacks, it decided to reduce the amount 
of those already in circulation, and to discourage rather than encourage 
the speculating tendencies of the people. It set the first day of the 
year 1879 as the date when it would begin to redeem the greenbacks 
in gold. The Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman, amassed nearly 
$150,000,000 in gold in the vaults of the treasury in preparation for 
this resumption of specie payments, which so impressed the people 
with the government's financial soundness that they no longer cared 
for the redemption of the notes. The paper money was more 
convenient to carry than coin for the purposes of ordinary business 
transactions, and from that day to this about $350,000,000 worth of 
greenbacks, backed by a gold reserve which has usually stood at 
about $150,000,000, have circulated as money on a par with gold in 
every section of the country. They are literally as good as gold. 

Whether or not to coin silver was another important financial 
problem of the day. Up to 1873 the government had coined mainly 
The question §°^^ ^^^ ^^^ little silver, inasmuch as the mine-owners 
of the coin- generally found it more profitable to dispose of their 
ge s ver. gj^g^jj stock of silver for use in the arts than to bring it 
to the mint for coinage. Congress in 1873 passed a law for the 
demonetization of silver, that is, it ceased coining silver dollars alto- 
gether. Almost immediately thereafter, by the discovery of new 
mines, the supply of silver suddenly became greater than the demand 
for it in the arts, and the price of silver went down. In their mis- 
fortune the mine-owners turned to the government with the request 
that Congress begin again to coin silver as well as gold. The debtor 
classes and the sufferers from the panic of 1873 welcomed the pro- 
posal as another means of increasing the volume of currency and 
improving their own condition. 



AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 429 

It was proposed that all silver brought to the mints be coined, 
as before 1873, upon the payment of a small fee to reimburse 
the government for the cost of the operation, and that The Biand- 
a double standard of value, silver as well as gold, be Allison Act. 
maintained. This plan, popularly known as the free coinage of 
silver, was an inflationist scheme almost as radical as that of the 
Greenbackers. When the supporters of free silver perceived that 
the upholders of gold as the single standard of value were strong 
enough in Congress to defeat the proposed change, they agreed to a 
compromise bill which was passed over the veto of President Hayes, 
known as the Bland- Allison Act of 1878. This provided that the 
government, though still remaining on the gold basis, should purchase 
not less than $2,000,000 nor more than $4,000,000 worth of silver 
every month for coinage into silver dollars. The compromise law 
remained on the statute books till 1890, but under its operations the 
demand for free silver, far from being satisfied, went on increasing. 

It was natural that with the widespread attention given to industrial 
improvement some heed should be paid to the demand for the intro- 
duction into the government service of the principles of 
modern business efficiency. From the days of Jackson ^r^alTusU-^^ 
the political ofl&ces within the gift of the government had ness-iike re- 
been looked upon as rewards to be handed round to party civ™ service, 
favorites for political services rendered. Favoritism, 
corruption, and inefficiency were the natural accompaniments of the 
system. One of the first suggestions of the distribution of offices 
according to ability without regard to party came from Senator Charles 
Sumner of Massachusetts during the Civil War. After the war, 
regularly every year for many years, Representative Jenckes of Rhode 
Island introduced a bill in the House of Representatives embodying 
the new ideas. President Grant in 1871, with the faint support of Con- 
gress, which was soon withdrawn, made a few spasmodic beginnings 
toward reform; but little of permanence was accomplished. 

President Hayes heartily supported the new movement. Within a 
few weeks after his inauguration he startled the leaders of his party by 
an order that no government official should take active 
part in a political campaign nor pay assessments on his Hayes's sup- 
salary for political purposes. Suiting his action to his Reform *^^ 
words, he removed Chester A. Arthur and Alonzo B. 
Cornell from their offices in the New York customhouse for refusing 
to honor his order, and to Arthur's successor he wrote, "Let no man 
be put out because he is a friend of Mr. Arthur, and no one put in 
merely because he is our friend. The good of the service should be the 



430 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

whole end in view." The President failed in his efforts to induce 
Congress to come to his point of view and enact the new ideas into law, 
but he succeeded in arousing public sentiment. Local civil service 
reform leagues sprang up in various sections, and the National Civil 
Service Reform League, which still exists, came into existence. The 
professional politicians of every party, who realized that with the 
accomplishment of the desired reform their "plums" would slip away 
from them, bitterly opposed the stand of the President. 

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1880 

Hayes administered the affairs of the country in troubled times. 
Every great issue that arose in his term of office called forth a storm of 
Ha es's opposition.' The election contest of 1876, the withdrawal 

difficult ad- of troops from the South, the antagonism of capital and 
ministration. ^^^^^^ financial reform, and the reform of the civil service, 
all tended to bring unpopularity upon the administration. Moreover, 
the enactment of any important legislation in the last two years of the 
President's term was blocked by the Democratic control of both houses 
of Congress. President Hayes had declared at the beginning of his 
administration that he would not be a candidate for reelection, so that 
he was definitely out of the race for the presidency in 1880. 

Without doubt the real leader of the Republican party at this time 
was not President Hayes but Senator James G. Blaine. Two obstacles, 
however, stood in the way of Blaine's nomination to suc- 
the possible ceed Hayes; first, a suspicion that he had shared in the 
candilfale^f corruption of Grant's administration, and second, the 
the Repubii- implacable opposition of his fellow Republican, Senator 
cans. Roscoe Conkling of New York. Blaine was a hail fel- 

low well met, Conkling dignified and self-conscious. In the sixties, 
while both men were members of the House of Representatives and 
before Blaine had been elevated to the speakership, in the heat of an 
angry personal controversy Blaine had ridiculed Conkling on the floor 
of the House, accusing him of a "haughty disdain," a "grandiloquent 
swell," and a "majestic, supereminent, overpowering turkey-gobbler 
strut." The offended Conkling never forgave the words. He worked 
against his enemy in the national Republican convention of 1876 and 
on every other occasion that presented itself. When the convention 
of 1880 was at hand, a portion of the party, with Conkling at their head, 
presented as their candidate ex-President Grant, who had just returned 
from a trip around the world and was still immensely popular. No 
President, however, not even Washington, had had a third term, so 
that many sincere admirers of the Soldier-President now turned from 



AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 431 

him for fear of encouraging "Caesarism." A third candidate for the 
RepubHcan nomination, in addition to Blaine and Grant, was Hayes's 
Secretary of the Treasury, John Sherman of Ohio. After balloting 
thirty-five times the Republican convention was "stampeded" on 
the thirty-sixth ballot for General James A. Garfield of Ohio, who had 
made the nominating speech for Sherman. 

The Democrats passed over Tilden and gave their nomination to 
General Winlield Scott Hancock, one of the heroes of the northern 
army at Gettysburg; the Prohibitionists named General The other 
Neal Dow, father of the prohibition law in Maine, the nominations, 
first of its kind in the country, and the Greenbackers put forward 
General James B. Weaver. Every candidate in the campaign had 
been a general in the Union army. 

Privileged for the first time since i860 to take part in a presidential 
contest without the presence of federal troops, the reconstructed 
Southern States carried their grievances against the The result 
Republican party. to the polls and voted solidly with the at the polls. 
Democrats, and "solid" for that party they have been ever since 
with few exceptions. The same passions of sectionalism were at 
work in the North for the Republicans, and Garfield was elected 
with a popular vote of 4,450,000 and 214 electoral votes, to a 
popular vote of 4,400,000 and 155 electoral votes for Hancock; Weaver 
polled a popular vote of 300,000 with no electoral votes, and Dow a 
popular vote of 10,000. 

CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 

James A. Garfield had quitted the Union army as a major general 
before the war was over to accept a seat in the national House of Rep- 
resentatives, where he served without a break for eighteen james A. 
years. While a member of the House, he was elected Garfield, 
to the United States Senate from Ohio, and then to his credentials to 
membership in both Houses of Congress there was added at the same 
time the title to the chief magistracy. Garfield had been a useful 
though not a brilliant congressman, and by his election to the presi- 
dency the hope was raised that he would be able to unite the warring 
Republican factions of the Stalwarts and the Half-Breeds. 

This was not to be. Though both factions temporarily buried the 
hatchet during the campaign, trouble began as soon as 
the President made his first nominations to public office, quarrels over 
Bitter feeling arose in the Senate when the President ig- patronage 
nored the hard and fast custom, known as "senatorial 
courtesy." This custom demands that the President, in making 



432 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

nominations to public office in any particular state, follow the recom- 
mendations of the Senators from that state; and the Senators usually 
stand together to coerce the executive into conforming to the prac- 
tice. Garfield had already angered the two Senators from New York, 
Roscoe Conkling and Thomas C. Piatt, by refusing to follow their 
recommendations as to the formation of his cabinet, and by daring 
to make Conkling's enemy, James G. Blaine, Secretary of State. In a 
further unexpected show of independence the President sent to the 
Senate the nomination of one Robertson as collector of customs at the 
port of New York without first consulting the two Senators. When, 
contrary to "senatorial courtesy," the Senate confirmed the nomination, 
Senators Conkling and Piatt in anger resigned their seats and to vin- 
dicate their stand sought reelection in the New York legislature. In 
this they were both defeated. Following closely after these events, 
came the exposure of frauds in the letting of contracts for carrying the 
mails along certain routes, called "star routes." The vigorous prosecu- 
tion of the guilty by order of the President threw the spoilsmen into 
consternation. 

On July 2, 1 88 1, as he was walking arm in arm with Secretary 
Blaine in the depot of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Washington, the 
The assassi- President was shot in the back by a disappointed office- 
nation of the seeker and died on September 19. The assassin called 
President. himself a "Stalwart of the Stalwarts," and a "lawyer, 
theologian, and a politician," who had done the country a service by 
opening the way for the " Stalwart" Vice President, Chester A. Arthur, 
to succeed to power. The madman was given a fair trial, and was 
convicted and hanged. 

The death of the President turned public attention to the spoils 
system as the responsible cause of the tragedy. To the surprise and 
delight of the friends of the merit system, the "Stalwart" 
Service Re- Arthur in the presidential chair sided with them, and with 
^f'^iRM*^* his executive approval the Civil Service Reform Act, or 

the Pendleton Act, introduced in the Senate by George H. 
Pendleton of Ohio, was enacted into law in 1883. After swaying 
national politics for over half a century, Andrew Jackson's principle 
that "to the victor belong the spoils" had received its first official 
check, and to the credit of Congress be it said that it has never yet 
abandoned the general principle placed on the statute books in 1883. 

By the new law, provision was made for competitive examinations 
Provisions of for entrance into the various branches of the civil ser- 
the new lavsr. yice, and for appointment to office according to the rank- 
ing obtained by the candidates in the examinations. Removals from 



AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 433 

office were still possible, but incentive to make them for political rea- 
sons every four years was largely taken away by the provision of the 
law requiring that all appointments be made, not from the ranks of 
political favorites, but from the list of those standing highest in the 
examinations. The new rules were not to apply to all the offices in 
the national administration but only to those designated by the Presi- 
dent or by Congress. At first few offices were placed under the pro- 
visions of the law, but each President since has made some extension 
of the system. The death of a President was a high price to pay for 
the reform, but few laws passed in the last half century have accom- 
plished more in the interests of good government. New York State 
enacted a law in 1883 along the same lines as the national law, to 
govern its own civil service; and Massachusetts and a few other states 
have followed her example. Various cities have adopted similar 
regulations. 

IMMIGRATION 

Organized labor, bent on keeping down the supply of labor in order 
to maintain as high a standard of wages as possible, had long stood con- 
sistently opposed to foreign immigration, but only after Restriction 
the labor unions had become a powerful factor in national of immigra- 
life did Congress pay attention to their demands. The ^°^' 
first law of the United States for the restriction of immigration, marking 
the end of the country's traditional policy of welcome to all foreigners, 
was passed in 1882. Previous to this time there had been some few 
restrictions on immigration by such states as were directly affected; 
for example by New York, which had excluded certain classes. By 
the national law, which was in many respects a copy of existing state 
laws, lunatics and convicts were excluded, all who were liable to be- 
come a public charge, and, by an act of 1885, all contract laborers, that 
is, all laborers coming into the country under a contract. At this time 
most of the immigrants were from the countries of Northern Europe. 

The presence of thousands of Chinese laborers on the Pacific coast, 
attracted by the prospects of work in the gold mines and in the con- 
struction of railroads, was highly objectionable to the Chinese im- 
labor unions. The Asiatics worked for low wages, lived nugration. 
in squalid quarters on a few cents a day, and in general competed with 
the whites on terms which to the latter were intolerable. Their pres- 
ence, too, threatened to create another race problem, which might 
some day rival in difficulty the Negro or the Indian problem. President 
Hayes vetoed a bill passed in his administration to exclude the Chinese 
altogether, as contrary to the existing treaty with China; but before he 
went out of office he succeeded in making a new treaty with China, 



434 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

which gave to the United States discretionary power to "regulate, 
limit, or suspend" but not to "absolutely prohibit" the coming of 
Chinese laborers into the country. Under this treaty, in the adminis- 
tration of Arthur, Congress passed a law to exclude the Chinese for 
twenty years, which seemed to the President too long a term, and he 
refused his approval. A compromise bill, fixing the term of exclusion 
at ten years, was then passed and received the signature of the Presi- 
dent. This was renewed later under another president, and the ex- 
clusion is still in force. Though the law seems harsh, every nation 
undoubtedly possesses the right to expel from its shores any aliens 
whose presence may be considered dangerous to its interests, and like- 
wise to refuse admission to all whom it may consider undesirable. 

THE ELECTION OF A DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT 

The presidential campaign of 1884 was almost entirely devoid of 
great issues, but abounded in personal abuse heaped upon the two 
leading candidates. Although Arthur had administered 
dentka^nomi- his office well, the popularity of Blaine, the real leader 
iRRi^^ °* °^ ^^^ Republican party, overtopped him, and the party 
nomination went to the "plumed knight," as Blaine 
was called in the Republican convention of 1876. The Democrats 
named as their candidate Governor Grover Cleveland of New York, 
the Greenbackers General Benjamin Butler of Massachusetts, and the 
Prohibitionists Governor St. John of Kansas. Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood 
was the candidate of a small Equal Rights party, which demanded 
woman's suffrage. 

As Secretary of State during the short term of President Garfield, 
Blaine had greatly enhanced his reputation by his vigorous and confi- 
dent, though not always successful, conduct of the foreign 
record as Sec- affairs of the nation. Intervening in a quarrel between 
retary of Peru and Chile in South America to soften the demands 

of the latter power upon conquered Peru, he had made it 
apparent that he beheved that the United States possessed the right 
to interfere in the troubles of the South American republics with one 
another. He had attempted, unsuccessfully, to induce Congress to 
arrange reciprocity treaties with certain countries, that is, agreements 
for mutual free trade in specified articles. He had also unsuccessfully 
endeavored to induce Great Britain to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer 
treaty of 1850, so that the United States might independently build and 
own a Panama or Nicaragua canal. 

As soon as the presidential campaign of 1884 began, ill luck 
seemed to dog the path of the Republican leader. In the first place, 



AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 435 

the old suspicion of corruption attaching to his name caused many 
Republicans, nicknamed Mugwumps, to desert to Cleve- Blaine's 
land. Late in the campaign, by dining with a company of ^ '"'^^• 
millionaires in New York City, Blaine gave his detractors opportunity 
to charge that he was the candidate of the capitalists, while on the same 
day, in receiving a company of Protestant ministers, he allowed their 
spokesman, unrebuked, to refer to the Democratic party as the party 
of "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion." This disparagement of the 
Roman Catholic Church, unseemly in itself and extremely impolitic 
in the pivotal industrial state of New York which had a large Roman 
Catholic population, Blaine did not rebuke, probably through inad- 
vertence due to physical weakness, for he surely bore no animosity 
against that church. To crown all, Roscoe Conkling refused to 
lift his hand or to say a word for his old enemy, and Conkling 
men by the thousand stayed away from the polls on election day or 
voted for Cleveland. Without New York, Blaine received 182 elec- 
toral votes to 183 for Cleveland; and a special recount, the result of 
which was announced ten days after the election, gave New York and 
the election to Cleveland by 1,149 votes! The "grandiloquent 
swell" and the "turkey-gobbler strut" were avenged. It was said 
that in Conkling's own county in New York the Republican defec- 
tion was greater than Cleveland's majority in the state. The Pro- 
hibitionists cast 150,000 votes, and the Greenbackers in this, their 
last campaign, 175,000. 

James G. Blaine's race for the presidency suggests comparison with 
that of Henry Clay. Both had been great Speakers of the House of 
Representatives, great Senators, and great Secretaries of j^^qs. g 
State; both had failed to receive the nomination when Blaine and 
their party was successful at the polls; and both, when at ^^^ ^^' 
last chosen, went down to defeat through the defection of a small 
group in their own party, chiefly in New York State, which had been 
alienated by the candidate's own mistakes. 

INDUSTRL^L UNREST 

Grover Cleveland was the first President elected after the Civil War 
who had not taken an active part in that struggle. He had been 
district attorney of his home county of Erie, New York, Grover 
sheriff of the county, and mayor of the city of Buffalo. Cleveland. 
While mayor he was elected governor of the state by the phenomenal 
majority of 192,000, and while still governor was elevated to the presi- 
dency. As mayor and as governor he had proved to be a singularly 
courageous and businesslike executive, whose stirring veto messages, 



436 



AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 



President 
Cleveland 
and the 
people of the 
Southern 
States. 



now in accord with popular opinion and now boldly against it, won the 
respect even of his opponents. Although it was a great triumph for his 
party to return to the presidency after its exclusion since 1861, the vic- 
tory was not complete, since from 
1885 to 1889 the Democrats lacked 
control of the Senate. 

Believing, like Hayes, in the 
representation of the reconstructed 
states in the Presi- 
dent's cabinet, Cleve- 
land invited two 
ex-Confederates, L. Q. 
C. Lamar of Missis- 
sippi and A. H. Garland of Ar- 
kansas, to enter his cabinet. 
Southerners were sent abroad as 
ministers and consuls, and were 
awarded a due share of the other 
offices within the gift of the Presi- 
dent. This desire to restore to 
the South its former position and 
dignity in the national govern- 
ment and to improve the state of 
feeling between the two sections 
led Cleveland to go too far in at 

least one instance. By an executive order he directed the South- 
ern battle flags in the War Department at Washington to be restored 
to the Southern States. One Northern governor, wrongly concluding 
that the order included the restoration of the Confederate flags in 
the various state capitols, sent a fiery telegram to the President, "No 
rebel flag will be returned while I am Governor." The order was 
soon revoked. This friendliness to the South and the veto of many 
pensions bills made Cleveland unpopular among the old soldiers of 
the North and their partisans. 

Most of the leading questions of the first Cleveland administration 
were directly connected with the industrial situation. The open 

T J . • , warfare between capital and labor, which had already 

Industnal / .... ^ .- , , 

disturbances caused disturbance m the administration of Hayes, broke 

out with renewed vigor in 1886. The leading cham- 
pions of labor's cause at this time were the Knights of 
Labor, under the leadership of T. V. Powderly. After ceasing to be a 
secret order in 1882, the Knights so rapidly increased in numbers that 




Grover Cleveland 



in the year 
1886 



AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 437 

in the critical year of 1886, which like the year 1877 was a time of indus- 
trial unrest, the order contained over 700,000 members. There were 
one thousand five hundred strikes in the country in 1886 and almost 
as many in the next year. In the southwestern states in 1886 six 
thousand miles of railway were tied up by a strike for over seven weeks. 
In New York City a strike on the street railroads dragged on for 
several months, and at the height of the trouble every car had to 
proceed under the guard of policemen. In the city of Chicago over 
sixty thousand men and women of different trades left their work. 

At the McCormick reaper works in the latter city, fierce riots broke 
out, in the course of which the rioters were fired upon by the police 
and several workingmen shot. On the next day, whe^ ^j^^ ^^^^_ 
the strikers came together in Haymarket Square, Chicago, chist riots in 
to denounce the "atrocious attack of the police" on their ^^^°' 
fellow workmen, bitter speeches were made, and the police interfered 
to break up the meeting. In the confusion a bomb was exploded, kill- 
ing seven of the policemen and wounding sixty. 

Coming at a time of general agitation over the mutual rights and 
duties of labor and capital, the tragedy filled law-abiding citizens with 
consternation. The assault was discovered to be the ^j^g j^^g ^^ 
work of anarchists, who, though not affiliated with the the 
labor unions, thought the time of unrest a favorable oppor- ^^^^^ ^ ^* 
tunity to strike a blow for their cause. An anarchist is one who does 
not believe in organized government, and who, on the theory that all 
men ought to be allowed to control their own actions, aims to destroy 
existing government, some going to the extreme of advocating even 
murder to gain their end. The punishment of the ringleaders of the 
Haymarket mob was demanded, and after a quick trial seven of the 
eight arrested for complicity in the murder were condemned to death. 
Of these seven, four were executed, one committed suicide, and the 
sentences of two were commuted to life imprisonment. 

Though they did not go to the extremes of anarchism, the friends 
of labor were demanding radical changes in the social order. Socialism, 
which advocates the control by the state of the means of The growth 
production, was slowly gaining ground. Socialistic prin- °* socialism, 
ciples had been advocated in the United States as far back as 
Andrew Jackson's presidency; the movement then subsided, but in 
1874, in New York City, there was formed the Social Democratic 
Workingmen's party. Though the Knights of Labor were not avowedly 
a socialist organization, their demands for the common ownership of 
the land and for the government control of such public utilities as 
railroads, telegraphs, and telephones, embodied socialistic principles. 



438 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

The same organization called for better conditions in the mines and 
factories, an eight-hour day, the prohibition of child labor, compulsory 
arbitration of disputes between capital and labor, and an income tax. 
Men and women by the thousand were stimulated to serious thought 
along these lines by two popular books of the period, Edward Bel- 
lamy's "Looking Backward," an imaginary description of an ideal 
socialistic community in the year 2000 A.D., and Henry George's 
"Progress and Poverty," a discussion of the related problems of land 
laws and taxation. 

Congress had already recognized the strength of the labor move- 
ment. In response to its demands, a law was passed in 1882 for 
Industrial jhe restriction of immigration, and at an even earlier 
arbitration. ^jg^j-g g^ provision had been made for an eight-hour day 
for all laborers employed by or on behalf of the national govern- 
ment. In Cleveland's time the national Bureau of Labor was estab- 
lished to gather statistics of labor from all parts of the Union, and 
in the House of Representatives a standing committee on labor was 
formed. In 1886 the President sent to Congress the first message 
in the history of the government devoted entirely to the problems 
of labor, in which he advocated a permanent national commission 
of arbitration for the settlement of disputes between capital and 
labor. Congress consented to pass such an arbitration law, to apply, 
however, only to the differences between the railroads and their 
employees. The arbitration provided by this law was not to be com- 
pulsory nor was any means provided to secure the enforcement of the 
verdicts reached. Four states followed the national example by the 
enactment of state laws for the voluntary arbitration of labor disputes. 

The Knights of Labor declined after 1886 before the rising power of 
the American Federation of Labor, a rival organization formed in 1881. 
The Ameri- While the older society attempted to blot out the individ- 
can Federa- ual unions and merge them all in one national society, the 
on a or, ^^^ organization preserved the individuality of the sepa- 
rate unions and brought them together only on questions of common 
interest. The Federation entered upon remarkable growth under 
the leadership of its president, Samuel Gompers, who had come to the 
United States as a poor immigrant from England during the Civil War; 
its membership rose from 262,000 in 1881 to over 2,000,000 in 191 6. 

The unfair rates and other abuses of the railroads, of which the 
The abuses farming sections had complained in the seventies, had 
of the not been corrected. As the volume of crops in the West 

rairoa s. increased with the growth of the country in that direc- 

tion, the dissatisfaction with the railroads grew stronger. The gen- 



AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 439 

eral unrest in the industrial centers undoubtedly tended to increase 
the agrarian discontent. The railroad rates were in some cases 
actually advancing as the result of the continued consolidation of 
rival roads. Shippers chafed under discriminations in rates, by which 
certain localities, and even certain industries, secured lower rates than 
others. To compensate them for low rates on "long hauls," neces- 
sary because of the competition of rival roads, high rates were charged 
on "short hauls," where there was not the same competition. Com- 
petitive roads occasionally "pooled," that is, combined their interests, 
and by common agreement raised the rates at the expense of the public. 
State regulation of railroad rates, which had been upheld by the 
Supreme Court in the Granger cases in 1877, to the great satisfaction of 
the farming classes, were in 1886 declared unconstitutional by the 
same tribunal when applied to interstate commerce, on the ground 
that interstate commerce lay within the jurisdiction of Congress alone. 
Congress was therefore appealed to by the agricultural interests for a 
national law on the subject, and that body responded with a law, which, 
while it did not go to the length of fixing passenger and freight rates 
on interstate railroads, was an important step in the national regula- 
tion of these great transportation enterprises. This Interstate Com- 
merce Act of 1887 forbade pools and discrimination in rates, and 
created an Interstate Commerce Commission of five members with 
power to investigate the books of the railroads and to hold public 
hearings on rate questions. 

THE TARIFF, • 1865-1889 

The progress of industrialism after 1865, the warfare of capital and 
labor, the growing strength of the big corporations and the increasing 
opposition to them, put new vigor into the agitation for jjjstory of 
the reduction of the tariff. The Civil War had brought the tariff, 
a lull in the tariff controversy, creating, as it did, an unde- 
niable need for increased revenue with which to wage the war. In the 
crisis, low tariff sentiments were suppressed out of patriotism, and 
after the war, when the rates could be lowered again with safety to 
the treasury, it was found that the sentiment for free trade had almost 
disappeared. The Republicans, as the party in power, clung to protec- 
tion, while the Democrats had wandered so far from their former ideas 
that a long process of education was necessary to bring them back to 
their old advocacy of low rates. The convention that nominated 
Tilden for President in 1876 had declared for "a tariff for revenue only," 
but the demand attracted little attention in the campaign. In 1877 a 
free trade club was organized in New York, which started an agita- 



440 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

tion that did not die out, though it took several years to gain any con- 
siderable momentum for the movement. In the presidential contest 
of 1880 the subject was still of secondary importance, a "local issue," 
said General Hancock, whose curt dismissal of the matter probably 
lost him votes. President Arthur in 1882 surprised the Republican 
party and the country by urging on Congress a reduction of the tariff, 
and that body appointed a tariff commission to investigate and report. 
A slight reduction, the first since the war, was effected by the law of 
1883. A second bill in Arthur's administration to make further reduc- 
tions was defeated in the House of Representatives, where the Demo- 
crats were in control, by the defection of forty-one Democrats to the 
opposition. Definite support of low tariff could not yet be ascribed 
to the Democratic party, and the inability of the Democrats to come 
to an agreement on the subject killed reform for a number of years. 

In the Blaine-Cleveland campaign of 1884 the Democrats in their 
platform took a pronounced stand on the subject, though the war of 

personalities between the two leading candidates tem- 
'^nhe^Demo- porarily relegated tariff discussion to the background, 
cratic party "Unnecessary taxation is unjust taxation," said the 
tarS'^'^**'^ plank of the Democrats: "We denounce the Republican 

party for having failed to relieve the people from crushing 
war taxes. . . . Sufficient revenue to pay all the expenses of the 
federal government economically administered, including pensions, 
interest and principal of the public debt, can be got, under our present 
system of taxation, from custom house taxes on fewer imported articles, 
bearing heaviest on articles of luxury and bearing lightest on articles 
of necessity." President Cleveland and his Secretary of the Treasury 
stood loyally by this declaration and forwarded the movement at every 
opportunity, but the party did not yet present a united front on the 
issue, for enough Democratic votes were once more cast in the House 
of Representatives against a proposed reduction of the tariff rates to 
defeat the measure. 

A substantial argument for reduction was the existence of a surplus 
in the treasury of the United States, just as there had been in Andrew 
A sur lus Jackson's time. This did not now indicate that there was 

in the no national debt, but merely that the receipts were piling up 

treasury. j^ ^^^ treasury faster than it was feasible to pay off the 

debt. For the year 1870 there was a surplus of $102,000,000, for 1880 
$68,000,000, and for 1887 the amount totalled $103,000,000. The 
vast debt of the Civil War existed mainly in the form of United States 
bonds, which were to run for a certain number of years before they 
matured, that is, before they could be paid off in full. The government 



AGRARIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 441 

might go into the market and itself buy up its own bonds, probably 
at a premium, and thus bring it about that it would owe the debt to 
itself. This would furnish a use for the surplus and introduce into 
circulation among the people the money then tied up in the treasury. 
It was not certain, however, even if the government should attempt to 
take this step, that all the holders of the bonds would consent to part 
with them; nor was it desirable that the government come into pos- 
session of its own bonds, for the national banks stood in need of them 
as a basis for their circulating notes. 

Jackson's plan of distributing the surplus among the states did not 
appeal to Cleveland. In an able message entirely devoted to the tariff, 
he recommended to Congress that they reduce the amount 
of money coming into the treasury by lowering the rates tariff-reform 
of the tariff. The existing tariff rates, according to his message of 
views, were a "vicious, inequitable and illogical source 
of unnecessary taxation" and "ought to be at once revised and 
amended. . . . The simple and plain duty which we owe the people 
is to reduce taxation to the necessary expenses of an economical 
operation of the government, and to restore to the business of the 
country the money which we hold in the treasury through the 
perversion of governmental powers." 

Through the influence of the President the House of Representatives 

passed a bill providing for a general lowering of the tariff rates; but at 

the same time the Republican Senate passed a measure of 

its own, increasing the rates. Since the two Houses ^^® ^'^" ^ , 
. ' " agreement of 

failed to come to an agreement, the one result of the the two 
situation was to set the tariff before the people as the congr^^ss^ 
leading issue for the coming presidential contest. The 
passage of President Cleveland's measure in the lower House of Con- 
gress, where only four Democrats stood out against the change, 
proved that his endeavor to educate his party to favor tariff reform 
was making headway. It remained for the people to record their 
judgment on the matter at the polls. 

The Republican nomination in 1888 would probably have gone to 
their defeated candidate of the previous contest, had not that states- 
man refused the honor; instead, at Blaine's own suggestion, 
cabled to the convention from Europe, the nomination dentia^l^cain- 
was given to Benjamin Harrison, United States Senator P|jsn of 
from Indiana, the grandson of ex-President William 
Henry Harrison. The Democrats renominated President Cleveland 
by acclamation. The Prohibitionists again put forward a candidate, 
while the disturbed industrial classes, who were making a strong show- 



442 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

ing in trade unions, again entered national politics in two parties, the 
Union Labor party and the United Labor party. The Greenback party 
was dead, and no other party immediately arose to take its place as 
an advocate of the agrarian interests. 

The country was not ready to accept a lowering of the tariff, such 
as that to which Cleveland had committed the Democratic party, and 
The result Harrison was elected by a vote of 233 to 168 in the electo- 
at the polls. j-g^j colleges. Again the Empire State of New York was 
closely contested. Cleveland's failure to carry his own state, 
through the loss of a large part .of the Democratic vote of New York 
City, cost him the election. He had offended Tammany Hall by 
his extreme independence while governor of the state, and the sup- 
port which they reluctantly gave to him in 18S4 they refused to give 
in 1888. 

NON-PARTISAN LAWS CONCERNING MATTERS OF GOVERNMENT 

Because the Democrats in Cleveland's administration at no time 
had complete control of both Houses of Congress, the congressional 
The Presi- legislation of the period was essentially non-partisan. Of 
dentiai Sue- such nature were the laws in regard to the arbitration of 
cession c . industrial disputes and the regulation of the railroads. 
Three laws were passed relating to matters of national administra- 
tion. The Presidential Succession Act provided that in case of the 
death, removal, or inability to serve of both the President and 
Vice-President, the presidency should pass to the Secretary of State, 
and after him to the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of War, 
and to the other members of the cabinet in an order designated by 
the law. Previously, in the contingency of the death or inability to 
serve of both the President and Vice-President, the succession was to 
fall to the President of the Senate and from him to the Speaker of the 
House of Representatives. This old arrangement was an unwise one, 
inasmuch as on some occasions there was neither a President of the 
Senate nor a Speaker of the House of Representatives. If on such 
an occasion there had occurred a vacancy in both the presidency and 
the vice-presidency, succession to the presidency would have been un- 
provided for and the wheels of government would have been tempo- 
rarily stopped. In 1885, when Vice President Hendricks died, there 
was no Speaker of the House of Representatives as the House was 
not yet organized, so that the life of President Cleveland alone stood 
between organized government and a cessation of government. This 
situation called attention to the necessity of change. Under the old 
system, too, since it was possible for both the President of the Senate 



AGIL\RIAN AND INDUSTRIAL UNREST 443 

and the Speaker of the House of Representatives to belong to another 
party than that of the President, the death of both the President and 
the Vice-President might entail an overturn of politics in the adminis- 
trative control of the government, which would be unfair after the 
people's will had been expressed in a presidential election. 

An Electoral Law was passed rendering impossible such disputes 
over the counting of the electoral votes as had occurred in 1876. It 
provided that each state should settle any dispute arising 
between rival electoral colleges in that state, and that if Eie^ctorsa 
such a dispute should not be settled by the state, the joint ^-^w, and 
session of Congress should proceed to decide it under the Tenure" 
definite regulations indicated by the law. Finally the of Office 
Tenure of Office Act, which had been passed by Congress 
in the course of its quarrel with President Johnson, was repealed. 

In 1 888 the states began to adopt a new form of ballot known as 
the secret or Australian ballot, in order to lessen the evils of bribery, 
intimidation, ballot-box stulfing, and other election The Austral- 
abuses which, it was claim_ed, were especially rife in the ^^^ ballot, 
presidential contest of 1884. So rapidly did the reform spread that 
by 1896, eight years after the first state, Kentucky, took the step, only 
three states had failed to adopt the method to some extent. Under 
the new system, the state itself assumed the expense of furnishing 
ballots of uniform size and color, containing the names of candidates 
of all parties; the voter was not allowed, as formerly, to bring to the 
polls a ballot which he had previously prepared, but must use only 
the ballot given him by the election officials and must mark it secretly 
in a booth by himself. In arranging the names on the ballot various 
plans have been followed. On the so-called "Massachusetts ballot" 
the names of the candidates are arranged alphabetically under the title 
of each office ; there is no party emblem, such as a flag or an eagle, to 
guide the ignorant voter, but after each candidate's name there is usually 
printed the name of his party. To vote such a ballot a cross must be 
placed opposite the name of each candidate voted for. This method is 
supposed to encourage independent voting. On the "Indiana" or 
party column ballot, which is the one most extensively used, the 
names of all candidates of a single party are placed in a separate 
column with the party emblem at the top, and a circle within which 
the voter may place a cross to vote a "straight ticket" if he so desires, 
with the opportunity to place crosses after individual names if he wishes 
to "spHt" his ticket. 



444 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

E. Stanwood, James G. Blaine; C. R. Williams, Rutherford Birchard Hayes; T. E. 
Burton, John Sherman; Beard, Contemporary History; E. B. Andrews, Last Quarter 
Century; H. T. Peck, Twenty Years of the Republic; Sparks, National Development; 
E. V. Smalley, The Northern Pacific Railroad. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. Industrial Strife in 1877. Dewey, National Problems, 71-78; J. A. Dacus, 
Annals of Great Strikes; Labor Strikes, in Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia for 1877. 

2. Civil Service Reform. Annual Reports of the United States Civil Service 
Commission; Dewey, National Problems, 21-40; Fish, Civil Service and Patronage, 
209-246; Beard, American Government and Politics, 222-230. 

3. The Disturbed Year of 1886. Dewey, National Problems, 40-112: Hill, 
Decisive Battles, 240-268; Epochs, X, 57-63; D. D. Lum, Trial of Chicago Anarchists; 
Anarchists, in Appleton's Annual Cyclopaedia for 1886. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 
P. L. Ford, Honorable Peter Stirling. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

In what respects was Hayes a strong President? Would his renomination by 
the Republicans in 1880 have been politically wise? Was the United States justified 
in excluding Chinese immigrants? Why was President Cleveland unpopular with 
the old Union soldiers? Compare the industrial unrest of Jackson's time, of the 
days of the Civil War, of 1877, and of 1886. What in general was the develop- 
ment of capital and labor during the period? Why were the Democrats said to " need 
education on the tariff" after 1865? Compare Cleveland's solution of the surplus 
in the United States treasury with that of Jackson. Why were there so many non- 
partisan laws passed in Cleveland's time, 1885-1889? What were the leading current 
issues before the people in the presidential campaigns of 1880, 1884, and 1888? 



CHAPTER XXVII 
PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 

THE LEGISLATIVE RECORD OF THE REPUBLICANS, 1889-1891 

By their victory in 1888 the Republicans won not only the presi- 
dency but both houses of Congress. Before passing any laws, they 
undertook to improve the rules of procedure in the House 
of Representatives. For some years the minority in that the rid^Vof 
body, sometimes Democratic and sometimes Republican, the House of 
had been in the habit of blocking legislation by means tatives.^"' 
of dilatory motions, that is, motions to consume time, 
such as motions to adjourn. The custom had grown rapidly in the 
eighties. Speaker Thomas B. Reed of Maine, placed in the Speaker's 
chair by the Republicans in 1889, broke up the practice by arbitrarily 
refusing to put a dilatory motion to the House. Another device of 
the minority to block legislation had been for the members, though 
present, to refuse to vote. As it was the parliamentary custom to 
consider a member absent who did not vote, the minority party was 
often able in this way to prevent a quorum to do business. Speaker 
Reed put an end to the practice by counting all silent members as 
present and thus securing a quorum. When one member denied the 
Speaker's right to count him as present and desired to "read from 
parliamentary law on the subject," Reed coolly replied, "The chair is 
making a statement of fact that the gentleman is present. Does he 
deny it?" The Speaker was denounced as "tyrant" and "Czar," but 
lived to see his neWrules sustained by the Supreme Court and accepted 
even by the Democrats as the permanent rules of the House. 

With their house in order, the Republicans proceeded to con- 
structive legislation. The first measure passed was a concession to 
the growing sentiment against large business corporations j^ie Sherman 
or trusts. An Anti-Trust Act, proposed by John Sherman, Anti-Trust 
United States Senator from Ohio, followed up the Inter- 
state Commerce Commission Act passed in the previous administra- 
tion. This Sherman Act was entitled "An Act to protect trade and 
commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies," and provided, 
first, that "every contract, combination in the form of trust or other- 

445 



446 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

wise, or conspiracy in restraint of trade or commerce among the several 
states, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal," and 
second, that "to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among 
the several states" was likewise illegal. The act did not forbid every 
corporation or trust as such, but only those engaged "in restraint of 
trade or commerce among the several states"; and it did not define 
what were restraints of trade, and what were monopolies, but left 
the definition of these terms to the courts. 

Strange as it may seem, this law was allowed to lie dormant on the 
statute books for fourteen years, while giant monopolies rapidly 
developed. Since 1904 it has been enforced with increasing vigor 
each year, and at the present day, with certain amendments, it is the 
government's chief weapon against monopolies. 

At about the same time Congress passed another important act 
of legislation in the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which went farther 
in the direction of free coinage of silver than had the Bland- 
SUver ^^"^ Allison Act of 1878. The Bland-Allison Act, it will be 
Purchase recalled, had directed the United States to purchase for 

coinage into silver dollars not less than $2,000,000 nor 
more than $4,000,000 worth of silver every month. Under its working, 
during the troubled decade of the eighties, the demand in the West 
for the free coinage of silver, which it had been the object of the act 
to satisfy, continued to increase, while the price of silver continued 
to decline. This demand the Republicans in 1890 deemed it wise to 
recognize. The Senate, with recently admitted members from several 
new Western States, was ready to accede to the extreme demand for 
free silver, but the House of Representatives stood opposed, and the 
compromise Sherman Silver Purchase Act was the result. This law 
no longer allowed discretion in the amount of silver to be purchased, 
but directed the purchase by the government of 4,500,000 ounces of 
silver every month, an annual amount equivalent to the total silver 
production of the country in 1890. In payment for this silver the 
government was to issue treasury notes which were to circulate as 
money. Still the price of silver continued to decline. 

That the passage of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and of the Sher- 
man Silver Purchase Act, by a party popularly supposed to be friendly 
The McKin- ^^ conservative interests, was not without a purpose, was 
ley Tariff revealed a few months later when the McKinley Tariff 

^^^' Law of 1890 was passed. It was in return for the enact- 

ment of the two laws for the benefit of the radicals that the conservative 
Republicans claimed and secured the support of a sufficient number 
of radicals to write into the statute books this highest tariff law in the 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 447 

history of the country to that time. The law received its name from 
William McKinley of Ohio, Chairman of the Ways and Means Com- 
mittee of the House of Representatives, which framed the bill. Aside 
from the higher rates imposed, the new act possessed two unique 
features. First, it placed raw sugar on the free list and offered a bounty 
of two cents a pound for the production of domestic sugar, while to 
protect the domestic refineries a duty was placed on refined sugar. 
Second, through the efforts of James G. Blaine, whom President Har- 
rison had made Secretary of State, the principle of reciprocity, or 
reciprocal free trade, was embodied in the act. By this plan, certain 
products, chiefly from the West Indies and Central and South America, 
such as hides, molasses, tea, and coffee, were put on a provisional free 
list, the President to have the power of restoring the duty at specified 
rates for any country if he decided that that country was imposing 
unfair rates on articles imported from the United States. More than a 
dozen nations secured the proffered concessions. Others with whom 
the President could not come to agreement were forced to pay the 
higher rates in the United States. The Republicans had answered 
Cleveland's challenge to lower the tariff and bring less revenue into the 
national treasury by boldly enacting a law to raise the rates and bring 
in more revenue. 

A programme of heavy national expenditures was the Republican 
solution of the surplus. The Dependent Pension Law, similar to a bill 
vetoed by Cleveland, was passed, under which the annual jje^™ ^^_ 
outlay of $88,000,000 for pensions in 1889, rose to $159,- tionai ex- 
000,000 in 1893. From 1889 to 1893 the annual expendi- ^^° ' ^^^^' 
tures for the navy rose from $21,000,000 to $30,000,000. So heavy 
did the expenditures of the central government become that the 
Democrats in derision, and to sound a note of alarm, styled this Con- 
gress of 1889-1891 "a billion-dollar Congress." The charge was true 
that the appropriations of this Congress reached one billion dollars, 
but Speaker Reed retorted for the Republicans that the United 
States was "a billion-dollar country." As a result of high protection, 
heavy national expenditures on pensions, the navy, public buildings, 
rivers and harbors, and other improvements, have remained the 
Republican policy. 

Few Congresses in time of peace have passed such an array of 
important laws as were passed by this first Congress of the administra- 
tion of Benjamin Harrison. These, as we have seen, other 
embraced laws on the trusts, silver, the tariff, pensions. Republican 
and the navy. In addition an Anti-Lottery Law excluded ™®^^"^®^- 
lottery tickets from the mails, another law compelled the land-grant 



448 



AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 



railroads, which had not made use of their lands, to restore these to the 

government, and another made minor changes in the regulation of 

immigration. 

The same Congress (i 889-1 891) admitted into the Union six new 

states, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, and Washington in 

More new 1889, and Wyoming and Idaho in 1890. No other twelve 

states in the months in the history of the country have witnessed the 
West 1 ■ 

creation of so many new states. At the close of the War 

of 181 2, when the frontier lay in the basin of the Mississippi in the in- 
terior of the continent, it was considered rapid progress when five 
states were admitted in as many years, but during this industrial era 
at the end of the century the West was enjoying an unprecedented 
growth. The admission of Utah followed in 1896. 

A second Pacific Railroad aided the Union Pacific in moving the 
human tide to the new communities. This new road was the Northern 
The North Pacific, completed in 1883 after more than ten years' 
ern Pacific work, from Duluth on Lake Superior to Helena, Montana, 
^"^"^ ■ and in 1893 to Tacoma on Puget Sound. Within the 

decade of the eighties at least 800,000 took up their residence along its 
route. It was like the movements of population that had followed 
the completion of the Erie Canal and the Union Pacific Railroad. 
The progress of the West is represented graphically by the fol- 
lowing table: 





Made 

a 
State 


Population 


1850 


i860 


1870 


1880 


1890 


1900 


1910 


South Dakota . 
North Dakota . 

Montana 

Washington . . . 

Wyoming 

Idaho 

Utah 

Oklahoma 

New Mexico. . . 
Arizona 


1889 
1889 
1889 
1889 
1890 
1890 
1896 
1907 
1912 
1912 


11,000 
6 1 ,000 


4,000 

11,000 

40,000 
93,000 


14.000 

20,000 
23,000 
9,000 
14.000 
86,000 

91,000 
9,000 


135,000 

39,000 
7 5, 000 
20,000 
32,000 
143,000 

119,000 
40,000 


348.000 

190,000 

142.000 

357.000 

62,000 

88,000 

210,000 

258.000 

160.000 

88,000 


401 ,000 
319,000 
243.000 
518,000 
92,000 
161,000 
276.000 
790.000 
195.000 
122,000 


583,000 
577,000 
376,000 

1,141,000 
145,000 
325,000 
373,000 

1,657,000 
327,000 
204,000 



A writer of the time declared concerning the rapid changes: 
"Living men, not very old yet, have seen the Indians on the war-path, 
Raoid ^^^ buffaloes stopping the trains, the cowboy driving his 



changes in 
the West. 



cattle, the herder watching his sheep, the government 
irrigation dam, and the automobile — have seen every 
one of these slides which progress puts for a moment into its magic 
lantern and removes to replace with a new one." Says another writer, 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 449 

who compares the peopling of the United States with the expansion 
of Russia over Siberia, "The development of the original thirteen 
states into the present Union, extending from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific and from Mexico to Canada, remains one of the most marvelous 
achievements of human history." 

Farther south, a part of Indian Territory under the name of Okla- 
homa, "the beautiful land," was thrown open to white settlement 
by a proclamation of the President, April 22, 1889. For The settle- 
many years the whites had coveted the rich lands of ment of 
this reservation, but had been warded off by the govern- 
ment till it could acquire for them a legal title to the lands. The 
opening was picturesque. Fifty thousand people were waiting for 
the signal to advance over the boundary line and make their choice 
of the rich lands. Many were successful and many failed. "Whole 
outfits for towns, including portable houses, were shipped by rail, and 
individual families, in picturesque, primitive, white-covered wagons 
journeyed forward, stretching out for miles in an unbroken line. . . . 
The blast of a bugle at noon on a beautiful spring day was a signal for 
the wild rush across the borders. Men on horseback and on foot, 
in every conceivable vehicle, sought homes with the utmost speed, and 
before nightfall town sites were laid out for several thousand inhabit- 
ants each." By three o'clock in the afternoon of the opening day the 
town of Guthrie was already laid out, with four business streets lined 
with shops and offices installed in tents. There was even a bank with 
a capital of $50,000 and a daily paper. By four o'clock a city council 
had been elected. A census at the end of the year revealed the pres- 
ence of 60,000 people in the territory. 

In 1 89 1 there was another rush into a second part of the forming 
state, and again into a third part in 1893. The population of Oklahoma 
in 1900 was 790,000, in 1907, when it was admitted into Rapid 
the Union as the forty-sixth state, 1,114,000, and in 1910, growth of 
1,650,000. The population of Oklahoma City rose from ® em ory. 
4000 in 1890 to 10,000 in 1900 and to 64,000 in 1910, a gain of five hun- 
dred and thirty-nine per cent in a single decade and the most rapid 
gain of any city in the nation during that period. 

With the rapid filling of the western lands there came a revolution- 
ary change in the government's method of dealing with its Indian 
charges. Reservations for them had first been set aside The Indian 
in the early part of the nineteenth century, under a loose reservations, 
construction of that clause of the Constitution which gives Congress 
the power "to regulate commerce with the Indian tribes." Indian 
Territory had been assigned to them when Georgia was ridding itself 



4SO AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

of the Creeks and Cherokees; and from time to time scores of smaller 
Indian reservations had been made on the- public domain. The 
Indians on the reservations were allowed to retain their tribal govern- 
ment and laws; it was not necessary for them to work for their own 
support; supplies were distributed to them by the government through 
a resident superintendent or agent; schools were maintained for their 
welfare; liquor and firearms were forbidden to them; and white trad- 
ers were excluded from their midst. In the judgment of the Supreme 
Court the Indians could not be regarded as citizens of an Indian 
nation, since under the Constitution of the United States there could 
be no such thing as a state within a state, nor yet were they citizens 
of the United States. Rather they were wards, cared for by the United 
States as by a protector. In their anomalous position the Indians 
had no civilized law, for they were not yet sufficiently advanced to 
make laws of their own according to the standards of civilization, while 
the laws of the United States applied to the Indians only by rare 
special enactment. 

Such a system tended to' pauperize the Indians and to deprive them 
of all incentive to individual effort. Two classes urged a change. 

^ .^. First, there were those who confessed the failure of the 

Opposition . • • 1 1 .,,.,. , , ^ 

to the reservation prmciple and wished it discarded for one 

system*^°° which would throw the Indians on their own resources 
and develop their initiative and self-reliance. Second, 
there was the large army of restless whites, looking for more lands and 
each year finding the search more difficult, who coveted the Indian 
lands for themselves. White settlement was retarded by the existence 
of the reservations, and the building of railroads and other improve- 
ments was frequently blocked. 

The first sign of change came while Grant was President, when 
Congress discarded its customary habit of dealing with the Indians 
A new ^y ^^^ method of a treaty. There always lurked in such 

Indian procedure the implication that the Indians were a nation 

to be dealt with like other nations. In 1886 the Supreme 
Court reversed its former view of the Indian status and decided that 
the Indians were no longer wards without law, but that the benefits 
and the obligations of the law of the United States applied to them 
as well as to whites. In the next year Congress passed the Dawes 
Act, under which, with later amendments, if the President deems that 
a reservation should be divided up for farming purposes, he may 
cause it be to surveyed and allotted to the heads of the Indian families 
of the reservation, while he himself holds their land in trust for them 
for twenty-five years. At the end of this period the Indians are to 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 451 

receive the deed to their lands, with the full rights of United States 
citizenship, the privilege of selling the lands, and of deporting them- 
selves in general like ordinary citizens of the republic. The right to 
obtain liquor is denied till full citizenship is acquired at the end of the 
twenty-five years, and the benevolent educational institutions of the 
government, administered impartially both for Indian citizens and 
for Indian wards, are still maintained at a cost to the United States of 
over $6,000,000 a year. By way of exception, the President may 
award the lands to capable individual Indians without waiting for the 
period of twenty-five years to elapse. In 19 14 the entire Cherokee 
tribe became United States citizens, and the tribal organization was 
formally dissolved. 

In 1910 there were in the United States 265,000 Indians and in 
Alaska 25,000, slightly more in each case than in 1900. Scattered 
over the Union in the various states are two hundred and Indian 
eighty tribes, ten represented by only one member each, statistics. 
The largest tribe was the Cherokee before its dissolution in 1914, 
with 31,000 members; others are the Navajos with 22,000, the 
Chippewas with 20,000, the Choctaws with 15,000, and the Sioux 
with 14,000. One-fourth of all the Indians are centered in Oklahoma. 

With the rapid settlement of Oklahoma and of the six Northwestern 
States admitted in 1889-1890, the unsettled lands of the United States 
practically disappeared, and the western frontier, as a j,^^ disap- 
feature of American life, passed away. Of the many pearance of 
millions of acres once in the hands of the government 
only a few small Indian reservations remained unoccupied by whites. 
The dissatisfied classes of the settled portions of the country could 
no longer "go West" to cheap lands in their time of trouble to 
mend their fortunes in the new country, for the cheap lands were 
all but impossible to secure. For almost three centuries, from the 
time of the first English settlement in 1607, civilization had been 
bordered by wilderness, and in all that long period, as population 
increased, the vaguely located border between civilization and wilder- 
ness had been constantly pushed westward. The frontier bred free- 
dom, equality, disregard of conventions, and the spirit of progress, and 
had contributed these qualities to the national life. The West in gen- 
eral stood for radicalism, the East for conservatism, and the history of 
the country had been largely the resultant of the interaction of these 
two forces. The disappearance of the frontier and the growing 
clashes of capital and labor were more than a coincidence. As the 
restless were no longer drawn off to the frontier lands and the East 
and the West tended to become more and more like one another, the 



452 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

turbulence of the radical element found vent in class rather than in 
section, and the fermentation of the labor world was a result. 

After the demise of the Greenback party following the presidential 
contest of 1884, the agrarian element, as such, had kept out of politics. 
The rise of ^^^ ^^° societies, the Patrons of Husbandry and the 
the Populist Farmers' Alliance, the latter of which claimed 3,000,000 
^^ ^' members in 1890, were still non-political. In 1890, how- 

ever, the Alliance placed congressional and state candidates in the 
field and forced the country into a recognition of their strength by 
electing nine members of the national House of Representatives and 
two members of the national Senate. 

As the Senate was Republican and the House of Representatives 
Democratic during the last two years of Harrison's presidency, the 
The presi- hands of the Republican administration were tied, and to 
tion*o1' 1^892' its end in 1893 few more laws of importance were passed. 
The In 1 89 1, in preparation for the presidential contest of the 

op sts. next year, the Farmers' Alliance and their sympathizers 
formally organized themselves into a national party under the name 
of the People's or Populist party. Their platform, adopted in 1892, 
was a radical declaration. "The fruits of the toil of millions are 
boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in 
the history of mankind," ran the document, "and the possessors of 
these in turn despise the republic and endanger liberty." Govern- 
mental injustice bred the "two classes, tramps and millionaires." 
Free coinage of silver was demanded, an income tax, postal savings 
banks, governmental ownership of railways, telegraphs, and telephones, 
and direct election of United States Senators by the people; the initia- 
tive and the referendum were also indorsed. General Weaver, who 
had been the Greenback candidate in 1880, was the nominee of the 
new party. 

The Republicans had made a conscious attempt to check this wave 
of discontent, which had been rising for a number of years, by enacting 
The the Sherman Anti-Trust Law and the Sherman Silver 

Republicans. Purchase Act, and by creating the six new western states. 
At the same time they were depending on the McKinley Tariff Law to 
prove a tower of strength for them in the conservative East. They 
renominated President Harrison. 

The struggle for the Democratic nomination was a contest between 
ex-President Cleveland and his opponents, with the Tammany Hall 
The Democrats of New York City still arrayed against him. 

Democrats. jj^ 1 891, when his party, in an effort to capture the 
farmers' vote in the West, was showing decided leanings toward the 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 453 

extreme doctrine of free silver, Cleveland boldly came out against the 
doctrine, and his nomination on the first ballot by the convention of 
1892 removed free silver from a prominent place as a campaign issue. 
Like that of 1888, the campaign was fought on the tarifif question alone. 

In the height of the campaign a great strike occurred at the Carnegie 
Steel works at Homestead, near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, which worked 
against the interests of the Republicans and put them on -pj^^ 
the defensive, inasmuch as their high tariff stand had won Homestead 
for them the reputation of being the champions of the ^ " ®' 
rich protected interests. When the company announced that it was 
necessary to reduce wages, the workers refused to acquiesce and took 
possession of the works. Armed detectives were hired by the com- 
pany, and in the ensuing encounters a number were killed and wounded 
on both sides. The governor of the state was obliged to call out the 
militia to restore order. 

Cleveland received 277 electoral votes and the election. His 
popular vote was 5,556,000 against 5,175,000 for Harrison, 1,040,000 
for Weaver, 255,000 for the Prohibition candidate, and Cleveland's 
21,000 for the candidate of the Socialist Labor party, second 
which now waged its first campaign. The large vote 
of the Populists indicated again the extent of the agrarian unrest. 
Besides increasing their number in the United States Senate to three 
and in the House of Representatives to ten, the Populists, in fusion 
with the Democrats, succeeded in electing governors in four Western 
States and in securing twenty-two electoral votes. 

FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1877-1893 

In the administrations of Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Cleveland, and 
Harrison, the nation's foreign policy was concerned largely with its 
southern neighbors. In the eighties the French embarked ^j^^ French 
on an attempt to construct a canal between the Atlantic canal at 
and. the Pacific at Panama. The first plan formulated by ^^^i^- 
the United States for such a canal was that embodied in the Clayton- 
Bulwer treaty of 1850, which contemplated a neutral canal under the 
joint control of the United States and Great Britain. The United 
States repented of this agreement almost as soon as it was made, and 
the experience of the French occupation of Mexico in Civil War days 
strengthened the growing conviction that it was incompatible with 
the interests of the United States to endure a strong European nation 
as a near neighbor on the south. When, in 1880, the Frenchman, 
Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had constructed the Suez Canal, appeared 
in New York and Washington in the interests of a French Panama 



454 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

Canal, President Hayes and his Secretary of State, William M. 
Evarts of New York, opposed him. The President declared in a mes- 
sage to Congress : "The policy of this country is a canal under American 
control. The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this 
control to any European power or to any combination of European 
powers." 

Congress, however, took no steps to thwart the French undertaking. 
Secretary Blaine, under President Garfield, took the same position as 
Secretary Evarts before him, but he failed in his efforts to induce Great 
Britain to give up the Clayton-Bulwer treaty under which the United 
States was bound to take in that country as a partner in the construc- 
tion of any canal between the two oceans. President Cleveland re- 
jected Hayes's idea of a strictly American canal under the control of the 
United States, and clung to the old Clayton-Bulwer idea of a neutral 
canal; he even withdrew a treaty with Nicaragua, sent by President 
Arthur to the Senate, which would have given to the United States 
the right to build a canal across that country. 

After several years of effort the French enterprise at Panama ended 

in failure, with their canal only two-fifths completed and over $3 00,000,- 

The failure °°° expended. One hundred French Senators, Deputies, 

of the Ministers, and ex-Ministers were accused of bribery in 

French ' • • • 

connection with the enterprise, and De Lesseps himself 

was sentenced to imprisonment for five years, though he died before 
beginning the sentence. The reasons for the failure were various, 
among them being the exorbitant prices extorted by the Colombians 
for their land, improper sanitation, poor hospitals, extravagance in 
purchase of supplies, and a short-sighted plan of disposing of the 
excavated earth on the banks of the canal itself, whence it fell back 
again into the excavation. As an instance of the fraudulent methods 
of the directors of the French company may be cited an item, in their 
list of purchases, of thousands of snow-shovels for use in Panama. In 
thC' United States, zest was added by the French undertaking to the 
nation's attempt to improve transportation facilities between the 
Atlantic and Pacific oceans; and work on the transcontinental rail- 
roads was pushed with vigor. 

The international complications which the existence of a French 
Canal at Panama might have created not only for the United States 
Warning to ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ South American states, were averted, but the 
the United United States was warned by the episode that European 
nations would cultivate closer relations with the states 
south of her if she herself did not. 

In November, 1881, James G. Blaine, as Secretary of State, in the 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 455 

name of the President of the United States extended " to all the inde- 
pendent countries of North and South America an earnest 
• • • • • . • 1 ^ . 1 1 T 1 The Pan- 

mvitation to participate m a general Congress to be held American 

in the city of Washington, on the twenty-fourth of iggf^fHo^ 
November, 1882, for the purpose of considering and dis- 
cussing the methods of preventing war between the nations of America." 
Chile and Peru had been at war with one another for several years, and 
it was hoped that these two nations might be brought together and a 
plan agreed upon for preserving peace among all American nations. 
The war, however, did not cease, and the invitation was withdrawn. 
The Congress of the United States continued to discuss the plan of a 
Pan-American conference, and in 1888, after the warring nations of 
South America had made peace with one another, it authorized the 
President to call another Congress of the eighteen American republics 
and the empire of Brazil to meet in Washington in 1889. Before 
settling down to their deliberations, the delegates, as guests of the 
nation, visited leading manufacturing and commercial cities in various 
sections of the Union, and then assembled at the national capital 
to consider questions of mutual interest. Recommendations were 
voted concerning matters of commerce and international law, and 
arbitration was indorsed as a means of settling international disputes 
between American states. It was under the influence of this congress 
that Secretary Blaine made the recommendations which the Senate 
and the House of Representatives enacted into law as the reciprocity 
provisions of the McKinley Tariff Law. A second Pan-American 
Congress was held in Mexico in 1901-1902, a third in Rio de Janeiro, 
Brazil, in 1906, and a fourth in Buenos Ayres, Argentine Republic, 
in 1910. The fifth would have been convened in 191 5, but for the 
general interruption of affairs occasioned by the breaking out of war 
in Europe. The idea of common action by the republics of America, 
which had taken root in 1826 during the administration of John Quincy 
Adams and had passed through various vicissitudes of fortune, had 
at last become a permanent working force. 

A definite achievement of the Pan-American Congress of 1889-1890 
was the creation of the Pan-American Union, which has since been 
maintained in Washington by the American republics, -j-j^^ p^j^_ 
increased in number to twenty-one by the addition of American 
Cuba, Panama, and the new republic of Brazil. The 
object of the unique international organization is the furtherance of 
commerce, friendly intercourse, and a mutual understanding. It is 
controlled by a governing board, composed of the Secretary of State 
of the United States and the diplomatic representatives in Washington 



456 



AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 



of the other American republics, and does a work of far-reaching im- 
portance, carrying on an extensive correspondence and sending forth 
numerous pamphlets, reports, and bulletins, in English, Spanish, and 
Portuguese, on matters of common interest. 




Pan-American Building, \\ asiii.ngtun, D. C. 

Hardly had the Pan-American Congress of 1 889-1 890 adjourned 
when trouble arose with Chile, which embittered the relations of the 
Trouble United States with that country to the end of the Harrison 

with Chile. administration. President Harrison was slow in recogniz- 
ing the belligerency of a revolting faction in Chile, and finally caused 
the indictment of an agent of the insurgents who had bought arms 
in this country and sent them back to Chile. Excitement was intense, 
but the courts decided that it had not been a violation of the neutrality 
laws to procure the arms here and that the vessel, the I lata, carry- 
ing them had not been fitted out as a vessel of war in our ports, but 
was a mere transport engaged in a lawful mission. After the insurgents 
had conquered and were installed in power as the national government 
of Chile, more bad feeling against the North Americans was aroused, 
when the United States minister accorded temporary asylum in his 
legation building at Santiago to the leaders of the defeated party and 
allowed them to make their escape. Unwisely, in October, 1891, the cap- 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 457 

tain of the United States warship, Baltimore, gave shore leave at Val- 
paraiso to over one hundred of his men. In the street fighting with 
the citizens which almost instantly broke out, two Americans were 
killed and nineteen wounded. Chile paid $75,000 as indemnity for the 
outrage, but only time could assuage the bitterness of feeling which 
temporarily marred the mutual good-fellowship between two American 
republics, which it had been one of the objects of the Pan-American 
Congress to foster. 

Trouble with Italy came in 1891 over mob violence inflicted by 
citizens of the United States upon subjects of the King of Italy. 
A series of outrageous crimes in New Orleans was Trouble 
popularly attributed to an Italian Black-Hand society, ^^*^ ^*^^y- 
known as the Mafia; the chief of police was himself shot down. 
Orderly trial was given to the accused, but no one was convicted; and 
an infuriated mob forced an entrance into the jail and slew several 
suspected Italians without mercy. Three of these victims were sub- 
jects of the King of Italy, who promptly demanded of the government 
of the United States the punishment of the murderers and indemnity 
for the families of his murdered subjects. This the United States 
could not grant, since no crime had been committed against United 
States law and the matter was within the jurisdiction of the State of 
Louisiana. Secretary Blaine pointed out to Italy that the United 
States was a federal government in form, and that the culprits were 
answerable to the State of Louisiana. That state had no laws for 
awarding damages for loss of life at the hands of a mob, and therefore 
did nothing. The explanation was not acceptable to the Italian 
government, which recalled its minister from Washington, while the 
United States minister left Rome. Congress found a way out of the 
difficulty by voting $25,000 to the families of the victims, not as a 
recognition of damage claims but as an expression of regret, and the 
matter was settled. 

Again, as in the Caroline affair which arose out of the rebellion in 
Canada in 1837, the weakness of the federal form of government in 
foreign affairs was demonstrated. The central govern- . 

A wcd.lcii6ss 

ment stands helpless before the power of the citizens of a of the Fed- 
state or of the state itself to do mischief in foreign re- ^^^^ ^°^^ °{ 

^ government. 

lations and even to embroil the nation m war. 

In 1878-1879 the King of the Samoan Islands concluded treaties 
with the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, by which these 
three powers recognized the independence of the islands. Within five 
years a native insurrection broke out. The situation was precarious, 
for in Samoa the Germans were without reason assuming that they 



458 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

were in control. After some hesitation Germany declared war on the 
native government, dethroned and deported King Malietoa, 
Pacific. and installed another in his place, with a German as ad- 

moanlsf^ds "^^^^^- Indignation was widespread in the United States 
over these acts. Congress made a large appropriation to 
safeguard American interests, and President Cleveland sent a small 
squadron to Samoa. The danger of war was averted by a great storm 
at sea, which destroyed all but one of the war vessels of the various 
nations in Samoan waters. A conference of the three powers was there- 
upon held in Berlin, and their joint protectorate over the island con- 
tinued. In 1899, by a new agreement. Great Britain withdrew entirely 
from the islands, Germany received Upola and other small islands of 
the Samoan group, and the United States Tutuila and a few other 
small islands, valuable chiefly as coaling stations for the navy. 

A long-standing dispute with Great Britain over the control of the 
Bering Sea and its seal fisheries came to a head during Harrison's 

„ ^, . administration. Inasmuch as Russia before 1867 claimed 

2. The seal , . 

fisheries in exclusive rights in this sea between Siberia and Alaska, 

the Bering |_|^g United States upon acquiring Alaska claimed the same 
rights. She was the more insistent upon exercising this 
control because of the danger that the seals would soon be exterminated 
under unrestricted fishing. Her own seal fishermen were limited to a 
certain number of seals, while the fishermen of other nations were 
slaying without hindrance. Perceiving that this claim of the United 
States, if allowed, would shut out her vessels from the seal fisheries 
in the Alaskan waters, Great Britain took the ground that the United 
States could exercise jurisdiction only for three miles from the shore, 
the accepted limit of national boundaries upon the sea. The Secretary 
of State pushed the claims of his country in somewhat dictatorial fash- 
ion and procured the arrest of several encroaching British vessels. By 
the award of arbitration which happily settled the matter in 1893, the 
United States was compelled to pay damages to Great Britain. The 
Bering Sea, beyond the three-mile limit, was declared to be not mare 
clausum, closed sea, but open sea, where the ships of all nations might 
hunt the seals with equal right. After the award in the matter of the 
Alabama claims, this was the next great victory for arbitration in the 
history of the country, a signal demonstration of the devotion of 
the United States to the principle of pacific settlement of international 
disputes. In 191 1 the United States, Great Britain, Japan, and Russia 
bound themselves by a treaty to work in harmony for the protection of 
the fur-seal herds of the entire North Pacific. 

There had been a handful of American inhabitants in the Hawaiian 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 459 

Islands in the Pacific for over fifty years, when in 1893, much after 
the fashion of the Americans in Texas in the thirties, these 
settlers rose up against the native monarchy, deposed in the 
Queen Liliuokalani, set up a provisional government of Hawaiian 
their own, and with the approval of the resident United 
States minister declared themselves a protectorate of the United 
States. President Harrison, at the very end of whose administration 
these events took place, proved friendly to the new government and 
sent a treaty to the United States Senate, providing for the annexation 
of Hawaii to the United States. The treaty was still pending in the 
Senate when President Harrison gave place to his successor, Grover 
Cleveland, who assumed the reins of government a second time. Per- 
ceiving that the nation was on the point of embarking upon the untried 
experiment of territorial expansion into new lands beyond the conti- 
nental limits of America, the new President boldly withdrew the un- 
ratified treaty from the Senate and successfully put a stop to the 
movement for the time being. 

CLEVELAND'S STORMY SECOND ADMINISTRATION 

The second administration of Grover Cleveland, like his first one, was 
a time of storm and stress, but from an entirely different set of causes. 
In his first administration the disturbing element had been j^^ g . . 
the revolt of the farming and industrial classes against panic of 
the tyranny of capital; now it was the distress of capital 
and labor alike in a time of adversity. A few weeks after the in- 
auguration of President Cleveland prosperity gave way to the most 
serious financial panic since that of 1837. The first signal of dis- 
tress came early in 1893 before Cleveland was sworn into ofl&ce, when 
the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad Company, with a capital of 
$40,000,000 and a debt of $125,000,000, went into bankruptcy. On 
May 5 the National Cordage Company, with a capital of $20,000,000 
and liabilities of $10,000,000, the stock of which had been selling on 
the New York market at 147, went to the wall. Cordage stock fell to 
10, and with it the whole stock market collapsed. In the course of 
the year 158 national banks, situated generally in the South and West, 
failed, 172 state banks went down, 177 private banks, 47 savings banks, 
13 loan and trust companies, and 6 mortgage companies. A billion 
dollars' worth of railroad property fell into the hands of receivers, 
thousands of factories were shut down and many worked on part time 
only. There were three times as many commercial failures as in 1873. 
While the blow was especially heavy in the West and South, the 
results were serious in the whole country, and furnished a background 



46o AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

of economic distress and hard times for the events of Grover Cleveland's 
second administration. 

One of the causes of the panic was the excessive speculation that 
is wont to accompany prosperity and had figured as a factor in pre- 
The problem ceding panics. In addition, the uncertainty of business 
of the gold men as to what the Democrats would do with the tariff 
reserve. j^^ ^^ unsettled conditions. Another disturbing cause, in 

the view of President Cleveland and many others, was the decrease 
in the gold reserve in the treasury at Washington. This fund, always 
above $100,000,000, and in 1891 amounting to $300,000,000, was 
intended to inspire confidence among the people in the $346,000,000 
worth of greenbacks in circulation. At first the credit of the govern- 
ment was good in the crisis, while that of hundreds of private business 
institutions was shattered or at least suspected; but in the prevailing 
lack of business confidence induced by the panic, men began to prefer 
gold to the government's paper promises to pay, and were taking the 
greenbacks to the treasury for redemption in greater amounts than 
usual. This privilege of exchanging the greenbacks for gold at any 
time was a wise one, in that it secured the circulation of these notes as 
money without fluctuation of value, but it was a practice that proved 
exceedingly inconvenient to the government when exercised by the peo- 
ple too extensively at one time. When the reserve began to fall below 
the $100,000,000 mark in 1893, apprehension was expressed for the 
government's credit, and when the falling reserve reached $95,000,000, 
fears were widespread that the greenbacks would soon begin to depre- 
ciate, as in the days of the Civil War when there was no reserve at all. 
Plainly the danger point was reached, for if the reserve should go much 
lower the credit of the government would certainly become impaired, 
and such a result would plunge the business world into deeper despair. 

President Cleveland reached the conclusion that partial relief from 
the decline in the gold reserve would be secured if Congress should 
Repeal of repeal the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which would 
the Sherman put a stop to the issue of any more treasury notes. 
Purchase Congress was called in special session in the midst of the 

^^^' panic, and after a battle of two months, was forced by the 

President to follow his recommendations and stop the purchase of sil- 
ver. The anger of the friends of silver both within and without the 
Populist party, for whom the law was passed in the first place, knew 
no bounds. 

While the panic was at its height and while the President and Con- 
gress were wrangling over the Silver Purchase Act, the people turned 
aside from financial troubles to celebrate the four hundredth anni- 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 461 

versary of the discovery of America in a great world's fair in Chicago, 
for which preparations had been in progress for four years, ^j^^ ^ori^'g 
Since the buildings were not ready in 1892, the fair was fair at 
postponed till the next year, when it was opened on the '^^^°' 
first of May in the presence of President Cleveland, the Duke of 
Veragua, who was a lineal descendant of Columbus, and an enormous 
concourse of people. Stretched along the lake front in imposing 
array were beautiful buildings for the display of the products of agri- 
culture, art, commerce, manufacturing, transportation, and every other 
branch of human activity. The various states of the Union, as well as 
the United States and many foreign governments, erected separate 
buildings. On one day, called Chicago Day, 716,000 people paid their 
way into the grounds. In spite of the disturbed conditions of the 
times, the number of visitors from May to October reached 27,500,000. 

At the next regular session of Congress, beginning in December, 1893,, 
the Democrats proceeded to revise the tariff according to the President's 
well-known ideas of what a just tariff should be. The ^. ^^ 
Democrats entertained great hopes for lower tariff rates, 
inasmuch as they were in control of both houses of Congress and of the 
presidency for the first time since the Civil War; but the Senate, 
though Democratic, proved to have in it protectionist Democrats. 
Some of the President's friends, foreseeing the stormy times ahead, 
had counseled him at the very outset of his administration to deal first 
with the tariff, which was a subject on which his party could best unite, 
and then to take up later the financial situation on which the party was 
sure to split into factions. Cleveland rejected the advice and suffered 
for his decision. 

The tariff bill of the Democrats was introduced in the House of 
Representatives by the chairman of the Committee on Ways and 
Means, William L. Wilson of West Virginia. It provided The Wilson 
for free trade in certain articles, such as sugar, iron ore, '^^^ ^•^*- 
wool, lumber, and coal, and for lowered rates on many other articles. 
After passing the House of Representatives the bill went to the Senate, 
where it was so loaded down with amendments that the original bill 
could scarcely be recognized. During the discussion that followed, 
the President wrote a letter to Chairman Wilson in which he stigmatized 
the bill, as amended in the Senate, as a record of "party perfidy and 
dishonor," and allowed the letter to be read before the House of 
Representatives. The House, however, in spite of the President's, 
disapproval, meekly surrendered to the Senate and accepted the 
changes. Of the important raw materials only wool was left on the 
free list. The President by not returning the bill to Congress within 



462 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

ten days allowed it to become a law, although he showed his contempt 
for it by not aflSxing to it his official signature. 

A concession to the radicals of all sections was the clause in the 
new law laying a tax of two per cent on incomes exceeding $4000. 
The income In view of the fact that the demand of the radicals was 
*"• for a tax on all incomes, graduated according to their 

size, the concession was not a great one, for only a small proportion of 
the entire population enjoyed an income of $4000 or more. 

After a winter of suffering in 1893-1894, when the evil of unem- 
ployment was probably more widespread than ever before, groups of 
Coxey's the unemployed roving over the country collected them- 

Army. selves together in the "Army of the Commonweal of 

Christ," and under the leadership of the fanatical "General" Coxey, 
set out in the spring to march to Washington to lay their demands 
before Congress. Their panacea for the ills of the country was an 
immediate issue by the government of $500,000,000 in greenbacks. 
Hundreds started on the crusade in eastern Ohio and hundreds more 
joined it on its way, but before the goal was reached desertions set in 
and only three hundred arrived at the Capitol in Washington, where 
their leaders were arrested by the Capitol police for "walking on the 
grass." Thoughtful people, however, saw not merely the absurdity 
of the movement but the symptoms of popular distress back of it. 

The familiar strike again appeared, and again Chicago was the 
scene of a deplorable struggle. The Pullman Palace Car Company, 
The Pullman ^^ ^^^ suburban town of Pullman, dismissed some of its 
strike in men in the spring of 1894 on account of lack of work and 

^^^°' lowered the wages of others, whereupon the entire four 

thousand employees went out on a strike, and in sympathy the 150,000 
members of the American Railway Union refused to handle a single 
Pullman car. Practically every railroad entering Chicago came to a 
standstill. Riots, destruction of property, and obstruction of the 
United States mails followed, till United States troops were called out 
to protect the mails. The strikers lost. By his act of sending the 
troops of the regular army to the scene to protect the mails against 
the strikers, the President called forth the indignation of the friends of 
labor; but in such a crisis, when law and order were at stake, Cleveland, 
like President Hayes in the similar crisis of 1877, was not a man to be 
moved by popular clamor. 

In addition to the use of the troops of the United States to put 
down the strike, labor found another grievance in the management of 
the situation by the Federal authorities. The United States district 
court of Illinois issued a so-called "blanket injunction," commanding 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 463 

the members of the American Railway Union and "all other persons" 
to desist from obstructing the mails. The order was injunctions 
issued in accordance with an old custom of the courts, against the 
The strikers were not informed beforehand that the judge 
had been applied to, their side of the case was not presented to him 
in any way, no witnesses were examined, and there was no jury. All 
this appeared arbitrary in the extreme, and incensed labor cried out as 
one man against the court in denunciation of its unfair and un-Ameri- 
can methods. Eugene V. Debs, the leader of the Railway Union, who 
was arrested for disobedience to the injunction, was sentenced to serve 
six months in jail; and in May of the next year, 1895, the Supreme 
Court of the United States upheld the justice of the sentence. 

Inasmuch as only one week before its decision in the Debs case, the 
Supreme Court had declared the income tax feature of the Wilson 
tariff law unconstitutional, the distressed agricultural Popular 

and industrial classes felt that this highest tribunal of the clamor 

, . , . r 1 • 1 • 1 against the 

land was mdeed arrayed m defense of the rich agamst the Supreme 

poor; and just such a storm of criticism was directed Court. 

against the court as it encountered in the time of Chief Justice Taney 

after the announcement of the Dred Scott Decision. 

Meanwhile, in spite of the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase 
Law, the problem of the falling gold reserve in the treasury was more 
pressing than ever. When the $70,000,000 mark was 
reached in January, 1894, the administration sold $50,- issues by 
000,000 worth of gold bonds and put the gold received go^g^'^nt^ 
into the treasury, in the desperate hope of restoring the 
reserve. To secure the gold necessary to buy the bonds many drew 
it out of the treasury by presenting more greenbacks there for redemp- 
tion, so that by an endless chain $24,000,000 was transferred from the 
treasury to the subscribers of the bonds and by them back into the 
treasury. In November of 1894, when the reserve was down to $52,- 
000,000, another issue of $50,000,000 gold bonds was made; but in 
January, 1895, when the reserve fell to $41,000,000, instead of calling a 
third time upon the public, the President secured $100,000,000 in gold 
by a secret contract with a firm of bankers in New York, headed by 
J. Pierpont Morgan. 

Vials of popular wrath were poured out upon the head of the Presi- 
dent for the transaction, both because he had acted in se- ^^ 

' , , The unpopu- 

cret and because he had allowed the bankers to buy the larity of the 

bonds more cheaply than the people had been buying them, ^f "^nds^* 

They charged that the President of the United States 

had proved himself a friend of the bankers rather than of the masses, 



464 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

and that the secret bond sales were illegal. The relief secured was only 
temporary, and before the end of the President's term another loan of 
$100,000,000 was added to the treasury, this time by a general sale of 
the bonds in which special effort was made to induce the people of every 
section to come forward and lend their money to the government. 

There was hardly a single popular measure of internal administra- 
tion in Cleveland's second presidential term. His own executive acts 

were unpopular, the laws of Congress found little favor, 
popularity of and the Supreme Court offended the people by its declara- 
the adminis- ^[q^ q^ ^}^q unconstitutionality of the income tax and its 

aflarmation of the justice of the sentence of Debs for dis- 
obedience to the "blanket injunction." Financial depression con- 
tinued to the end of the administration, and the country entered 
another presidential campaign in a discontented mood. The suffering 
and discontent of the farming and industrial classes were at their 
height. In such a condition of affairs it could not be expected that the 
radicals in the Democratic party, whose numbers had been increasing 
in the last four years, would repeat their graceful acceptance of 1892 
of a candidate opposed to their demands. 

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1896 

Up to the meeting of the Republican national convention in 1896, 
which was the first of the great party conventions of the year to assem- 
ble, it was not plain whether this party would declare 
pubUcan plat- for or against free silver, which was the leading demand 

form and ^f j-j^g radical classes. The partial surrender of the 

noiiiination. ^ , ,. , , rx- r--i • 1 01 

Republicans to the advocates of h ree silver m the bherman 

Silver Purchase Act of 1890 afforded some ground for the expectation 
that the Republican party might now accept the radical demand in its 
entirety. That some of the Republicans at least contemplated such a 
step was indicated by the refusal of William McKinley of Ohio, a can- 
didate for the presidential nomination, to commit himself for or against 
the proposition in advance of the action of the convention. The 
delegates waged a bitter struggle on the subject and finally decided in 
favor of the gold standard of value, although they made the concession 
that they would accept silver also as a standard on the basis of "inter- 
national bimetallism," that is, if the leading nations of the world 
would cooperate with the United States in accepting the double stand- 
ard of value of gold and silver under conditions to be agreed upon. The 
convention gave the nomination to McKinley over his leading rival, 
ex-Speaker Thomas B. Reed of Maine. 

In the national convention of the Democrats the conservative 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOV'ERY 465 

element, which stood behind President Cleveland against free silver, 
was overwhelmed at the very outset. The customary ^j^^ 
approval of the administration of their own President was Democratic 
refused by the convention in its action striking from the 
platform the following words, "We commend the honesty, economy, 
courage, and fidelity of the present Democratic administration." 
Before the final vote was taken regarding the platform, William Jen- 
nings Bryan of Nebraska swept the convention off its feet by a masterly 
speech in favor of free silver and radicalism in general. The orator's 
voice held the audience spellbound. " Mr. Carlisle said in 1878 that 
this was a struggle between ' the idle holders of idle capital ' and ' the 
struggling masses who produce the wealth and pay the taxes of the 
country ' ; and, my friends, it is simply a question that we shall decide 
upon which side shall the Democratic party fight. Upon the side of ' the 
idle holders of idle capital,' or upon the side of ' the struggling masses? ' 
. . . The sympathies of the Democratic party, as shown by the plat- 
form, are on the side of the struggling masses, who have ever been 
the foundation of the Democratic party. 

"There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe 
that if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their 
prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, 
however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, 
their prosperity will find its way up through every class that rests upon 
them. . . . You come to us and tell us that the great cities are in favor 
of the gold standard. I tell you that the great cities rest upon our 
broad and fertile prairies. Burn down your cities and leave our farms, 
and your cities will spring up again as if by magic. But destroy our 
farms and grass will grow in the streets of every city in this country. 
. . . Having behind us the commercial interests and all the toiling 
masses, we shall answer their demands for a gold standard by saying 
to them, you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown 
of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold." 

The movement which reached its culmination in this speech had its 
inception in the marked inequalities of fortune and economic opportu- 
nity which arose in the days of the Civil War and after 
that date; but no spokesman of the movement had com- nation of 

manded the attention of the entire nation as did the young pplitical 

• 1 T^ . . / discontent. 

Nebraskan lawyer, m the Democratic convention of 1896. 

Amid wild enthusiasm the platform advocated by Bryan was 

adopted. It called for the free coinage of silver at the ratio of sixteen 

ounces of silver to one of gold, condemned the recent bond issues 

of the national government in time of peace, and denounced the in- 



466 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

come tax decision of the Supreme Court and the issue of injunctions 
The Demo- ^^ ^^^ federal courts. In its various planks it virtually 
cratic plat- embraced the third party movements of the past quarter 
of a century, and met the demands of the Greenbackers, 
the Patrons of Husbandry, the Farmers Alliance, and the Populists; 
the Labor Reformers, the Knights of Labor, the American Federation 
of Labor, the Union Labor party, and the United Labor party; to a 
certain extent even of the Socialist Labor party. 

On the day after the adoption of the platform, Bryan himself, who 

was a dark horse, was placed at the head of the ticket, having won the 

^jjg honor by a single speech. He had served two terms in 

Democratic the House of Representatives, where he was known as an 

omm 10 . orator, though with a reputation far from national. 

So far as candidates were concerned, the contest lay between 
McKinley and Bryan. The latter was indorsed by thirty-four seceding 
The other delegates from the Republican convention, who formed 
parties. ^j^^ National Silver party, by a seceding wing of the 

Prohibition party, and by the more important Populist party. The 
jocular remark was made that the Populists had captured the Demo- 
cratic party. The Socialist Labor party did not join the others in 
indorsing Bryan, but put forward their own candidate. 

The Gold Democratic party, made up of seceders from the Democratic 
party, nominated John M. Palmer of Illinois as their candidate, but on elec- 
tion day the members of this party cast most of their votes for McKinley. 

Free coinage of silver meant the free coinage at the government 
mints of all the silver presented there at the arbitrary ratio of sixteen 
-pjjg ounces of silver to one of gold, although in the open market 

meaning of it took about thirty-two ounces of silver to equal in value 
one ounce of gold. The silver coined was to be legal 
tender, that is, lawful money for the payment of all debts. To coin 
silver at the proposed ratio, the government would be obliged to coin 
37 1 J grains of silver, then worth about fifty- two cents, and to stamp it 
as one dollar. The chief argument for the proposition was that the 
quantity of gold in the world was not large enough to furnish a suf- 
ficient supply of money, and that the free coinage of silver would put 
into circulation the requisite amount of money and relieve distress. 

The Republicans predicted that the unlimited coinage of silver 
The Repubii- would inflate the currency just as had the greenbacks, 
againsffr^e"*^ and like the greenbacks would drive the more valuable 
silver. gold from circulation, cause a rapid increase of prices, and 

foster speculation. 

Despite Bryan's appeal to the "masses against the classes," the 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 



467 



The tariff. 



of education. 



Republicans did not neglect to urge a protective tariff as a cure for 
the hard times. Thousands of large posters were circu- 
lated bearing a portrait of McKinley with the inscription, 
"The Advance Agent of Prosperity." Another poster, bearing the 
title, "The Real Issue," showed McKinley addressing laborers in front 
of a factory and declaring that it was better to open the factories than 
the mints, while Bryan was pictured in front of the United States mint, 
inviting the people of all the world to bring in their sih^er for free 
coinage. The platform of the Republicans, it was alleged, stood for 
"an honest dollar and the chance to earn it." 

In no previous presidential contest had there been such an extensive 
campaign of education. By means of their enormous campaign fund, 
which has been estimated to have been as great as $7,000,- a campaign 
000, the Republicans, under the direction of the chairman 
of the Republican National Com- 
mittee, Marcus A. Hanna, issued 
over 200,000,000 copies of docu- 
ments, sent forth thousands of 
speakers to harangue the people, 
and supplied hundreds of news- 
papers with specially prepared 
matter. The Democrats followed 
the same methods, though the 
scope of their operations was 
limited by their smaller campaign 
fund. McKinley himself con- 
ducted a "front porch " campaign 
at his home in Canton, Ohio, 
while Bryan traveled 18,000 miles 
and delivered approximately 600 
speeches to 5,000,000 auditors. 

Gn election day McKinley re- 
ceived 7,100,000 popular votes to 
6,500,000 for Bryan, and there 
was a much smaller vote for the 
Gold Democrats, the two wings of 

the Prohibitionists, and the Socialist Labor party. The 
electoral vote stood 271 for McKinley to 176 for Bryan. 

GRADU.\L RECOVERY OF BUSINESS 

Two events of the first year of McKinley's administration placed 
the business affairs of the country on a new basis and brought about the 




William McKinley 



The result. 



468 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

gradual dissolution of the organized forces of economic discontent which 
The Dingiey ^^^ rallied to the standard of Bryan. First, in fulfillment 
Tariff Law of their platform promises, the Republican leaders put 

through Congress the Dingley Tariff Law, named for 
Nelson A. Dingley of Maine, Chairman of the House Committee on 
Ways and Means which framed the bill. The new act restored the 
rates of the McKinley Act of i8go and in some instances even went 
beyond that act as a high protective measure. The duty on raw wool 
was reinstated, but as a concession to free trade sentiment the principle 
of reciprocity was again indorsed. The almost constant tariff agitation 
of the previous fifteen years now gradually subsided. The new law 
remained on the statute books unchanged for twelve years, during 
which time the country passed through a period of prosperity. 

The second event of far-reaching importance in the business world 
was the sudden increase in the supply of gold. While Congress was busy 
G Id d' - with the Dingley Tariff Act, the country was thrown into 
eries on the the greatest mining excitement since the early days of the 
River in Comstock Lode in Nevada more than a quarter of a century 

Canada, before, by the news that in less than a week's time two 

boundary Steamers had arrived at San Francisco from Alaska, one 

A?^ t ^"^ bearing forty miners and $500,000 in gold and the other 

sixty-eight miners and $1,250,000 in gold. The new dis- 
coveries proved to be in a remote region on the Klondike River, a tribu- 
tary of the Yukon, over the boundary line from Alaska in the Dominion 
of Canada. Notwithstanding the difficulties, thousands made their 
way to the new mines, and in twelve years secured $125,000,000 worth 
of treasure, though this rich return was far below the $500,000,000 pro- 
duced in the first twelve years of their history by the mines of California. 
The next year there was the same excitement over again, and again a 
rush of fortune seekers at the announcement that gold had been dis- 

covered at Cape Nome on the southern part of the western 
coveries on peninsula of Alaska bordering on the Bering Sea. These 
P^P? ^k™^ mines did not prove to be as rich as those of the Klondike, 

producing in ten years only $50, 000,000; but in conjunction 
with the latter they led to further discoveries, and from 1906 to 1910 over 
$100,000,000 worth of gold was taken from the Alaskan mines alone. 
The rapid extension of the gold mining industry in Canada and 
Alaska was coincident with a similar development in other countries, all 
World-wide °^ which together produced $254,000,000 worth of gold 
increase in in 1900, $402,000,000 in 1906, and $466,000,000 in 1912. 
pro uc lon.-^^^jy discovered mines, improved machinery, and im- 
proved processes of treating ores were all factors in the wonderful output. 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 469 

Such a prodigal supply of gold, thrust into the markets so soon after 
the Democratic argument in 1896 that the gold supply was too small 
to furnish a basis for the currency of the civilized world, ^^^ q .^ 
destroyed the main argument of the champions of free Standard 
silver and removed that issue from the realm of practical ^ ° 
politics. Heavy exports of food supplies also brought vast sums of 
gold into the United States and thus increased the amount of gold 
■ within the country. . The Gold Standard Act of 1900 definitely estab- 
lished the gold dollar as the standard of value in the United States 
and enjoined upon the Secretary of the Treasury the duty of main- 
taining all other forms of money at a parity with that standard. This 
official repudiation of free silver, for such the adoption of the gold 
standard amounted to, was received by the conservative business 
interests of the country with satisfaction, as settling, for this country 
at least, the vexed problem of the mutual relations of gold and silver 
coins. Thanks to the abounding prosperity in all sections of the 
country, the expected outcry of the free silver interests was ineflfective 
and soon ceased. Many economists are even of the opinion that 
the plentiful supply of gold has now furnished the world with too 
much money, and that the steady advance of prices since 1896 is 
attributable to this fact, for with too much money in circulation 
prices tend to go higher. 

FOREIGN AFFAIRS, 1893-1898 

In 1895 the Monroe Doctrine received emphatic reaffirmation, 
when it was vigorously and successfully applied in a controversy with 
Great Britain. That nation was overbearing the weak ^j^^ ^ene- 
nation of Venezuela in a dispute concerning the boundary zueian bound- 
line between Venezuela and the British colony of Guiana, "^ ^^^" ^' 
and when Great Britain refused President Cleveland's request to 
arbitrate the matter it seemed that Venezuela was on the point of 
losing territory that fairly belonged to her, and that Great Britain, 
in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine, was about to acquire new territory 
in the western hemisphere. Displaying the firmness of purpose 
which characterized all his acts, Cleveland, in a fiery, almost warlike 
message, proposed to Congress to appoint a commission to determine 
the right of the matter independently of Great Britain, and then to 
enforce the decision, come what might. "In making these recom- 
mendations," he added, "I am fully alive to the responsibihty incurred, 
and keenly realize all the consequences that may follow. I am, never- 
theless, firm in my conviction that while it is a grievous thing to con- 
template the two great English-speaking peoples of the world as being 



470 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

otherwise than friendly competitors in the onward march of civilizatiort 
and strenuous and worthy rivals in all the arts of peace, there is nO' 
calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows 
a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of 
national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and 
defended a people's safety and greatness." The patriotism of his coun- 
trymen was aroused by the implied threat of war in the President's 
message, and by the justice of the cause which he advocated, and all 
parties rallied to his support, ready to accept war rather than yield the 
point at issue. Great Britain gracefully yielded, and yet as far as 
possible she saved her dignity by negotiating a treaty of arbitration with 
Venezuela for the settlement of the trouble by compromise without 
waiting for the report of the United States commission. 

At the end of ten years of civil war, Spain had induced the Cuban 
rebels in 1878 to lay down their arms by granting to them various con- 
Another cessions, which she followed in 1885 by the abolition of 

Cuban revolt African slavery. Notwithstanding this, another revolt 
Spain. for freedom against the power of the mother country broke 

Causes. Q^^^_ [^ Cuba in 1895, concerning the causes of which a 

competent authority has written, "The British colonies in America 
in 1776 had much less justification for rebellion." There was no 
popular law-making assembly in the island and no Cuban repre- 
sentative in the law-making body (Cortes) of Spain; nowhere 
in the island was there a free press, free speech, or free religion. 
The natives did not belong to the governing class, but were under the 
arbitrary control of a Spanish governor, and office-holding was the 
prerogative of Spaniards; the natives were almost entirely excluded 
from the suffrage and were forced to live under a notoriously corrupt 
administration. 

The task of enforcing the neutrality laws of the United States after 

the Cuban Declaration of Independence in 1895 was a most difficult 

T1,.. ,^^«„ one for President Cleveland. Spain sent 121,000 soldiers 
The recog- _ _ '^ ' 

nition of to maintain her authority, and under General Weyler, 

insurgency. ^-^^ ^^^^ became known to the world as "The Butcher," 
the cruelty of the Spaniards made it harder for the sympathetic neigh- 
boring republic to keep her hands off. Recognizing that the strength 
of the Cuban rebellion was in the country districts. General Weyler 
resorted to a policy of "reconcentration," that is, he ordered all people 
of the country within eight days to come within fortified towns to live; 
and he enforced the order with ruthless severity. The country was dev- 
astated, and thousands died in the unsanitary reconcentration camps. 
In this situation both houses of Congress at Washington passed resolu- 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 471 

tions recognizing the Cubans as belligerents and the general public of 
the United States supported the resolutions, but President Cleveland, 
as was his right, refused to put them into effect. There was nothing to 
justify such a step, said the President, and he could repeat the words 
of Secretary Fish to President Grant: "The Cubans have no army, 
no courts, do not occupy a single town or hamlet, to say nothing of a 
seaport." 

Instead, the President recognized the insurgency of the Cubans, a 
new status in international law which meant that while they had not 
the standing of belligerents they were recognized as a band of people 
battling for political and not for merely lawless ends. 

As between the insurgents and the mother government of Spain 
Cleveland strove to enforce strictly the neutrality laws of the United 
States, first laid down by Washington in 1793. These The neutrai- 
among other things forbade the fitting out of a vessel »ty of the 
or of a military expedition in the United States against in the 
a state with which the United States was at peace. Com- struggle, 
plete enforcement of the law was impossible, and in three years, from 
1895 to 1898, at least seventy-one expeditions in aid of the insurgents 
left the ports of the United States for Cuba, twenty-seven of which 
landed safely. 

President McKinley's administration opened March 4, 1897, with 

the Cuban question overshadowing all others in public interest and 

day by day approaching a crisis. Despite President 

Cleveland's efforts, sympathy for the insurgents was on neutrality 

the increase throughout the United States. Spain finally to armed 

,r , . intervention, 

offered autonomy or self-government to the msurgents, 

but the latter rejected the offer and repeated their demand for inde- 
pendence. American feeling against Spain was distinctly embittered 
in February, 1898, by an indiscreet utterance of her minister in Wash- 
ington. In a private letter, which found its way into public print, that 
diplomat made the undiplomatic statement that McKinley was "a 
bidder for the admiration of the crowd — a would-be politician"; 
and a general outburst of indignation in the United States caused his 
hasty resignation. Matters suddenly came to a head, when, on Feb- 
ruary 15, the United States battleship Maine, on a friendly visit in the 
harbor of Havana, Cuba, was destroyed by an explosion and two 
hundred and sixty-five of her officers and crew killed. The deed 
seemed to be the work of the Spaniards, perpetrated out of resentment 
for the sympathy of the United States with the rebels. A wave of 
excitement swept over the nation, fanned by the revengeful cry of 
" Remember the Maine ! " 



472 



AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 



Public clamor insisted that the time had come to offer open assistance 
to the insurgents. The United States first demanded that Spain grant 
The congres- ^^ armistice to the Cubans, that is, that she stop the war 
sional reso- for a definite period, and when this was not granted in 

lutlOn of . /. 11- • 1 r A -1 ^ ^ , 

April 19, satisiactory terms, on the historic 19th of April, 1898, the 

1898. anniversary of the battle of Concord and Lexington in the 

Revolutionary War and of the shedding of the first blood of the Civil 




The Battleship " Maine " Entering Havana Harbor 



War on the streets of Baltimore, the Congress of the United States 
passed a resolution declaring first, "That the people of Cuba are, and 
of right ought to be free and independent. Second, that it is the duty 
of the government of the United States to demand, and the government 
of the United States does hereby demand, that the government of 
Spain at once relinquish its authority and government in the island of 
Cuba, and withdraw its land and naval forces from Cuban waters. 
Third, that the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, 
directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the 
United States and to call into the actual service of the United States 
the militia of the several states to such extent as may be necessary to 
carry these resolutions into effect. Fourth, that the United States 
hereby disclaims any disposition or intention to exercise sovereign juris- 
diction or control over said island except for the pacification thereof, 
and asserts the determination, when that is accomplished, to leave 
the government and control of the island to its people." The nation 
was united in support of the action of Congress, and any lingering sec- 
tional feeling between the Northern and Southern States disappeared 
in a new burst of patriotism. On April 20 President McKinley 
signed the resolution of intervention, and on April 22 announced to 
neutral nations the existence of a state of war. 

The navy was well prepared for the ensuing war. To Commodore 
George Dewey, in command of the Asiatic squadron, then at Hong 
Kong, China, were sent the orders: "War has commenced between the 
United States and Spain. Proceed at once to the Philippine Islands, 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 



473 



■^Hongkong 






South C. 

Bashee Channel.. 



MAP OF THE 

.PHILIPPINE ISLANDS 

SCALE OF STATUE MrLES 



r^ 






GS BABUYAN 



'~" Tiis'iieaboa 
Cojnaraug 



V 



6 



^ 



'\ Aalei 

y O Boiigabong 



Bolinao _ 

Lingaj;Lii'\ /baler 



Subie^ r x'2- 



■MANILA 

Balay:,a V 7 



O 



>S'' ' ^CATANDUANES 

^LAMIANESE^vf'^<^ I ^ l/ '^ MAS bate ' 

ISLANDS Yl <?^^ S f^^_^^ '■TsL^A 

<? iioiL.y 

U'b^I 1 t, 

•Z 1 u f 

BOnpL- J^ 

(,^jVJ— '"^^^ Suiijrao^- 
*^ ?'■*' '^ A Luluan 



Pal ipag ^ 
SAMAR 



Borongaii 

O 




125 ^SARANGANt fS. 



commence operations at once, particularly against the Spanish fleet. 

You must capture vessels or destroy. Use utmost en- x^e work of 

deavors." Dewey, with his squadron, sailed into the har- the navy at 

bor of Manila in the Philippine Islands, then Spanish Jf the Phfl- 

possessions, and at a little after five o'clock in the morn- ippine 
^ . r 1 T Islands, 

ing of May i, 1898, began one of the most extraordmary 

naval battles in the world's history. " You may fire when you are ready, 

Gridley,'.' said Dewey to the captain of the flagship, and the battle 



474 AN ERA OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT 

began. After barely two hours of fighting the American ships drew off 
with an idea that their ammunition was low; but finding that there 
was still plenty they rested and refreshed themselves and returned to 
finish briefly their work of destruction. The American ships were but 
slightly damaged and seven of the American sailors were slightly in- 
jured, while ten Spanish ships were utterly destroyed, three of their 
land batteries silenced, and three hundred and eighty-one of their 
sailors killed and many wounded. Dewey did not go on to take the 
city of Manila at once, since he had not enough men to hold it, and 
General Merritt hastened from San Francisco to his assistance with 
land forces. 

The news of this exciting event had hardly been received when 
Commodore Schley at the head of the ''flying squadron" set out to find 
The navy at another Spanish fleet, which had just arrived on the west- 
Santiago, ern side of the Atlantic. The hostile fleet was found in 
" ^' the harbor of Santiago on the southeastern corner of Cuba, 
and there Captain Sampson, in chief command, ably assisted by 
Schley, shut them up by blockade. On the third of July the im- 
prisoned Spanish fleet sailed out of the harbor and sought to make its 
escape. In the running fight every Spanish ship was destroyed and 
six hundred of their men killed and wounded. The American ships 
were but slightly injured, and only one American was killed and one 
wounded. The news reached the United States on the Fourth of 
July. 

The reason for the sudden departure of the Spanish fleet from San- 
tiago was the successful fighting of General Shafter and the United 
The work of States soldiers before the city on the two previous days, 
the army. 'pj^g outlying heights of El Caney and San Juan were 
stormed and taken, so that the fall of the city seemed only a question 
of time. The actual surrender came July 17. In another month 
Porto Rico was taken with no fighting whatever, and at about the 
same time the city of Manila capitulated. 

By the treaty of peace signed in Paris late in i8q8, Spain agreed, 
first, to withdraw from the island of Cuba; second, to cede to the 
The treaty of United States the island of Porto Rico; and third, on 
peace at payment of $20,000,000 by the United States to cede to 

*"^' ■ the latter power the Philippine Islands. Porto Rico and 
the Philippines thus became possessions of the United States. 



PROSPERITY, PANIC, AND SLOW RECOVERY 475 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

Beard, Contemporary American History; H. T. Peck, Twenty Years; E. B. An- 
drews, Last Quarter Century; Dewey, National Problems. 

SPECL\L TOPICS 

1. The Indian Question. F. E. Leupp, The Indian; H. H. Jackson, Century of 
Dishonor; L. E. Textor, Sioux Indians; Curtis, North American Indian. 

2. The Presidential Contest of 1896. D. R. Dewey, National Problems, 314- 
329; Contemporaries, IV, 536-538; Epochs, X, 108-124; E. Stanwood, Presidency, 

519-569- 

3. The Spanish American War. Foster, American Diplomacy in the Orient, 
399-438; Latane, World Power, 3-81; Contemporaries, IV, 573-590; F. E. Chadwick, 
United States and Spain, 411-588; R. A. Alger, Spanish American War; F. E. Chad- 
wick, United States and Spain — Spanish War; Epochs, X, 125-154; Bruce, Expan- 
sion, 187-210. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERLAL 

J. A. Riis, Children of the Poor, and How the Other Half Lives; F. Norris, The 
Octopus and The Pit; Octave Thanet, Heart of Toil; O. Wister, The Virginian; E. 
Bellamy, Looking Backward; M. W. Freeman, The Portion of Labor. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

How do you account for the increased amount of partisan legislation in the first 
two years of the administration of Benjamin Harrison? Recount James G. Blaine's 
services to Pan- Americanism. Review the part of Blaine in each presidential contest 
from 1876 to 1892. Review the diplomacy of the Harrison administration concerning 
questions of the Pacific. What concrete instances can you give in favor of the proposi- 
tion that Cleveland was a man of great firmness in his political opinions? Why was 
Cleveland unpopular in his own party when he left the presidency? Compare the 
unpopularity of the Supreme Court in 1857 and in 1896. Why were the Republicans, 
before thjir national convention in 1896, uncertain whether or not they would 
stand against free silver? Make a list of the territorial acquisitions to the United 
States, 1783-1915. Which was the most costly? Which the most important? Ac- 
count for the disappearance of free silver from the Democratic platform. Review 
the relations of the United States and Cuba, 1848-1898. What were the leading cur- 
rent issues before the people in the presidential campaigns of 1892 and 1896? 



PART VIII 
A WORLD POWER 

CHAPTER XXVIII 
THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 

TERRITORIAL EXPANSION 

Before the treaty of Paris had added to the United States the 
insular possessions of Porto Rico and the Phihppines,but while the war 
The annexa- ^^^^ Spain was Still raging, the United States took the step 
tion of that President Cleveland had feared was too great an in- 

awau. novation, and annexed the Hawaiian Islands. This was 

accomplished by a joint resolution of Congress, with the consent of the 
people of the islands, that is to say, with the consent of the American 
insurgents, who had been in the control of the islands since 1893. In 
I goo came the addition of a portion of the Samoan Islands in the 
Southern Pacific, which had been the subject of diplomatic negotiation 
in the administration of Benjamin Harrison. 

These annexations and those of the treaty of Paris, 1898, ushered in 
a new epoch in the history of the United States. By virtue of them the 
The meaning republic abandoned her former isolated position as an 
of the new "ocean-bound" republic and enrolled herself as a world 
nnexa ions. pQ^gj-^ with world-wide responsibilities and duties. The 
Monroe Doctrine was involved in new difficulties. If the United 
States could meddle in the affairs of another hemisphere and plant 
herself there as she did in the Philippines, why, the world might ask, 
could not a power of another hemisphere, with equal right, invade 
America? A further danger in the new order of things lay in the 
increased possibihty that the United States, possessed of the new 
outposts, might be drawn into the wars of foreign nations. It was, 
too, a grave responsibility to undertake to govern dependencies in the 
spirit of the Declaration of Independence. 

Directly after the battle of Manila in 1898 a United States gunboat 
had brought to the Philippine Islands from Hong Kong, China, where 
he had been in hiding, Emilio Aguinaldo, a native of the islands, who 

476 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 477 

had led a revolt of the islands against Spain in 1896. When the 
American troops entered Manila they were joined by an j. • 
army of these insurgents. Aguinaldo claimed that the tion in the 
Americans, in return for his assistance, had made the ippmes. 
promise to turn the islands over to him when once they were 
wrested from Spain, and now he demanded that the promise be ful- 
filled. Denying that such an agreement had ever been made, the 
Americans compelled Aguinaldo to lead his forces out of Manila, where 
their very presence tended to incite a spirit of insurrection against the 
new rulers. After leaving Manila, Aguinaldo proceeded to organize 
a Philippine republic with himself at the head, and for four years, 1898- 
1902, the United States and the Philippine republic contended with 
one another in guerrilla warfare, in the native fastnesses and jungles, 
for the possession of the islands. Aguinaldo was captured by the 
Americans in 1901 through the treachery of some of his followers. In 
another year the insurrection collapsed, and the power of the United 
States in the archipelago was established. 

The presidential contest of 1900 was significant as showing how 
thoroughly the people of the United States indorsed the new colonial 
policy, and it afforded evidence of the waning power in 
national politics of the agrarian and industrial agitation dentiai 
which had culminated in 1896. Nothing succeeds like ^oJJn®^*"^ 
success, and a period of prosperity had come to give 
strength to the cause of the administration, already intrenched in pub- 
lic esteem by a successful war. President McKinley was renominated 
by the Republicans on a platform calling for the retention of the Philip- 
pines, while the Democrats and Populists again nominated William 
J. Bryan on a platform reaffirming their advocacy of the free coinage 
of silver and demanding that the Philippines be given independence. 
The stress of the Democratic campaign was not placed on the hard 
lot of the working classes and the unfair advantage of the privileged 
classes, but rather on the Republican doctrine of imperialism as the 
chief issue. "Lincoln abolished slavery, McKinley has restored it," 
"The flag of the republic forever, of an empire never," was the cry of 
the Democrats. The issue was fought out before the people at the 
very time when the soldiers of the United States were engaged in 
putting down the ugly Philippine insurrection. In spite of this 
uncomfortable fact, the people gave McKinley a popular majority of 
one million votes, in comparison with the majority of six hundred 
thousand in 1896. The vote in the electoral colleges stood 292 to 155. 
The Socialist Labor and the Prohibition parties each polled a very 
small vote, while the new Social Democratic party, soon to be known 



478 A WORLD POWTR 

as the Socialist party, signalized its advent into national politics by 
polling a popular vote of 87,000. This new party went farther than 
the Populists in making radical demands, looking to still more direct 
participation in the government by the people and to the governmental 
control of the transportation routes and manufacturing industries. 

September 6, 1901, shortly after the beginning of his second presi- 
dential term, at the Pan-American or Ail-American Exposition, held 
. in Buffalo, New York, to celebrate the progress of friend- 
nation of ship and good will between North America and South 

^f^t^^^'^* America, President McKinley, who was visiting the 
McKinley. . . ' , , , . , , , , . 

exposition and had just made a speech on the subject of 

friendly trade relations with foreign nations, was shot by an anarchist. 

The President lingered eight days and then quietly passed away, 

sincerely mourned for his attractive personal qualities and for his 

practical and successful statesmanship. 

THREE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS 

The era ushered in by the Spanish war has not yet (19 16) come to 
an end. It is difficult to get a proper perspective of the age in which 
The new one lives, but the general trend of development may be 

^'^^^ observed. Three presidential elections have been held, 

in 1904, 1908, and in 191 2, without changing appreciably the tendencies 
discernible in 1900. New champions have come to the front from 
time to time and some slight changes of policy have been introduced, 
but general characteristics have varied little. A topical rather than 
chronological study will not only best bring the events of the period 
to mind but will also best serve as an introduction to the politics of 
the present day. 

In the foreign affairs of the beginning of the twentieth century, 
the dominant note has been the ever-growing participation of the 
The domi- United States in world politics, while prosperity, increas- 
nant note. jj^g direct participation by the people in the affairs of 
government, and progress in the governmental regulation of corporate 
wealth, have characterized domestic affairs. 

Vice President Roosevelt, who came to the presidency at the death 
of President McKinley, maintained his own leadership and that of the 
The presi- Republican party by a sweeping victory at the polls in 
dentiai con- 1904 over his Democratic antagonist, Judge Alton "B. 
test of 1904. p^^j,gj. Qf -^Q^ York. The vote in the electoral colleges 
stood 336 to 140, and at the polls the Republican plurality was over 
2,500,000. The Socialists under the lead of Eugene V. Debs, their 
candidate in 1900, raised their vote to 400,000, the Populists running 



THE UNITED STATES TN WORLD POLITICS 



479 



alone secured but 117,000 votes, while the Prohibition and SociaHst 
Labor parties again proved very weak. The differences between the 
two leading parties were slight. The Republicans appealed to their 
record of prosperity for justification of their policies; the Democrats 

advocated tariff reform and still 
had leanings toward Populist doc- 
trines, though they definitely re- 
nounced their free silver stand of 
the two previous campaigns. 

In the presidential campaign 
of 1908, after a The presi- 
spirited contest the dentiai con- 
• , • f 4. 1, test of 1908. 

nommation of the 

Republicans went to the Secre- 
tary of War, William H. Taft, 
who had had a brilliant career as 
judge in the Circuit Court of the 
United States, as governor of the 
Philippine Islands, and as a mem- 
ber of President Roosevelt's cab- 
inet. The Democrats a third time 
gave their nomination to William 
J. Bryan, and five small parties 
entered the field. Inasmuch as 
the differences between the two 
leading parties were minor, the 
campaign was uninteresting. 
Each stood for a downward re- 
vision of the tariff, the curbing of 
the trusts, publicity of campaign 
contributions, and the development of the natural resources of the 
country. Taft, profiting largely by the popularity of the Roosevelt 
policies, received a popular vote of 7,600,000 to 6,400,000 for Bryan; 
the electoral vote stood in his favor 321 to 162. The heavy Socialist 
vote of 1904 was sHghtly increased, while that of the other "third 
parties" remained very small. 

By 191 2 an insurgent element of the Republican party, which was 
opposed to the Taft administration for its alleged leanings toward 
conservatism, was so strong as to cause a tremendous ^j^^ Rgpyi,. 
conflict within the party over the choice of a presidential lican split 
candidate. By dint of great exertions the conservatives, ^° 
who favored no sweeping changes in legislation, gained control of 




Copyright by Pach Bros. 

Theodore Roosevelt 



48o 



A WORLD POWER 



the national convention, and gave the nomination to President Taft 
over ex-President Roosevelt, who was at the head of the insurgent or 
progressive wing of the party. So tenacious of their views were the 
Progressives that, though defeated, they refused to accept the 
verdict against them, and like the discontented in politics through- 
out the history of the nation, whenever their numbers have been 
sufficiently large and their views sufficiently dear, these Repub- 
lican radicals of 191 2 separated themselves from their former party 

and formed the new Progressive 
party, popularly called the " Bull 
Moose party." It had been just 
such a wave of discontent that 
had called forth the Democratic- 
Republicans in the time of Wash- 
ington, the Whigs in Jackson's 
time, the Republicans in Pierce's, 
the Liberal Republicans in 
Grant's, the Gold Democrats in 
Cleveland's, and the Green - 
backers, the Prohibitionists, the 
Populists, and the Socialists, at 
various times. The platform of 
the new party called for advanced 
social legislation in the interest 
of the laboring classes, woman's 
suffrage, stricter control of the 
trusts, and other changes more or 
less akin to the demands of the 
Socialists. In their enthusiasm 
for their leader and founder, the 
members of the new party of 191 2 
cast aside the third term tradi- 
tion, which from the time of Washington down to 191 2 had debarred 
every President, with the single exception of Grant, from seeking a third 
term, and nominated ex-President Roosevelt as their candidate. His 
heroic conduct when attacked by a would-be assassin at Milwaukee, 
Wisconsin, in the course of his campaign speaking, increased the ardent 
admiration of his followers. 

There was likewise an exciting contest between the conservatives 
and the radicals in the Democratic convention, which ended in the 
victory of the radicals, who succeeded in writing their ideas into the plat- 
form and in giving the nomination to Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic 




WooDRow Wilson 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 481 

governor of New Jersey. In this case the defeated wing of the party 
gracefully accepted the verdict against them and remained xhe struggle 
within the party. The leading tigure in the convention was for the 
the party's candidate in three past cam-paigns, William J. nomination 
Bryan, who as champion of the radical interests again ^^ ^^^^ 
proved himself the master convention orator of the age. As in 1904 and 
1908 the differences between the two leading parties were very slight. 
Out of a total of 15,000,000 votes cast on election day Wilson 
received 6,000,000, Roosevelt 4,000,000, Taft 3,500,000, and Debs, 
for a fourth time the Socialist candidate, 900,000. The The result 
electoral vote was 435 for Wilson, 88 for Roosevelt, and ^' **^® p°^^- 
8 for Taft. Debs received no electoral vote, though his popular 
vote was nearly double that given him in 1908. The Prohibition 
and Socialist Labor vote was again almost negligible. So com- 
pletely had the lines of cleavage of 1896, occasioned by agrarian 
and industrial discontent, disappeared, that the Populists did not 
put a candidate into the field. A large part of their strength probably 
went to the Progressives. 

PROBLEMS OF INSULAR GOVERNMENT 

One of the problems arising out of the Spanish War was the future 
of Cuba. The prompt withdrawal of the Spanish troops from the 
island raised the question whether or not the time had j, 
come to withdraw United States troops in accordance problems in 
with the resolution of Congress of April 19, 1898. If " ^' 
the troops were not at once withdrawn, it would be necessary to decide 
how long the army was to remain there and how it should be employed. 
The question was also to be settled whether the United States in 
the language of the resolution by which the United Sates had de- 
manded the withdrawal of Spain from Cuba, should "leave the 
government and control of the island to its people," that is, recog- 
nize the independence of Cuba as it seemed in duty bound to do, 
or should forcibly annex it. Without committing himself on the 
latter question, President McKinley decided that the army should 
remain in Cuba, temporarily at least; and he set it to work clean- 
ing up the island. Under its supervision modern waterworks, sewers, 
and paving and lighting facilities, of which the Cuban cities and towns 
knew little, were installed, and the islanders were taught how to sweep 
the streets and how to ward off yellow fever. The conquest of this 
great scourge of the tropics was the result of investigations which 
proved that the germ of the disease was carried by mosquitoes. 

The problem of Cuban government was approached slowly. The 



482 A WORLD POWER 

Cubans were allowed to hold a constitutional convention and to 

„. . draw up a form of government of their own. The result 

The organi- , ,. , r i xt • , 

zation of the was an almost exact copy oi the government oi the United 

^fc'b^"'^^'^ States, and was formally adopted by the Cubans after 
incorporating in it, to make it acceptable to their pro- 
tectors, the provisions of the Piatt amendment passed by the Congress, 
of the United States as an amendment to an army appropriation act. 
These were, first, that Cuba make no treaty with a foreign nation which, 
would impair its independence or in any way give to a foreign power 
lodgment or control in the island; second, that the island observe 
certain conditions in contracting a public debt; third, that she give 
to the United States the right to intervene in Cuban affairs "for the 
preservation of Cuban independence, the maintenance of a government 
adequate for the protection of life, property, and individual liberty"; 
and fourth, that the island "sell or lease to the United States lands 
necessary for coaling or naval stations." 

The new republic started on its way May 20, 1902, under President 
Palma, who had been President of the insurrectionary republic of Cuba 
Three Cuban in the seventies and now served again until 1906. An in- 
Presidents. surrection deposed him shortly after the beginning of his 
second term, whereupon the United States intervened and remained in 
the island till peace was restored and a second President, Gomez, went 
into oflEice in 1909. He was succeeded by President Menocal in 1913. 

The settlement of the government of the Philippines was also a 
difficult matter. Stable civil government had to be provided for 
The new 7j5oOjOoo people, scattered among thirty tribes and 

government over three thousand islands, 450,000 of whom were 
ippine classified by the census-takers as wild. As the problem 

Islands. j^^g been worked out down to the present time, three 

stages in the development of the American control of the islands 
have appeared. First, from the cessation of hostilities to the con- 
clusion of the treaty of peace, the islands were under the military 
power of the President as commander-in-chief of the armies of the 
United States. Likewise, in the second stage, from the treaty of 
peace till special action by Congress in 1902 changing the form of 
government, the islands were allowed by Congress to remain under 
the control of the President, who saw fit to associate with himself 
in their immediate government, first, a military commission and 
later a civil commission. William H. Taft was the head of this 
civil commission and was afterwards appointed to be the first 
civil governor of the Philippines. The third stage in the control 
of the islands was entered upon in 1902, when Congress took the 



90' Loftffititde East 120° from Qreenwich 150* 



150° Longitude West 120° from Qrt 




THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 483 

responsibility of the islands from the shoulders of the President and 
assumed their government itself under a new system. Under this 
system a native legislative assembly elected by the people was to 
work in connection with a governor and a commission or upper legis- 
lative house, both appointed by the President of the United States. 
This plan reproduced the British type of colonial government, prac- 
ticed generally in the American colonies up to 1776, the lower house 
of the legislature representing the people, and the upper house and the 
governor representing the mother country. In the Philippines, as in 
the earlier British colonies, the experiment was attended by conflicts 
of authority and dissatisfaction of the governed. 

The Democratic platform of 191 2 declared for "an immediate 
declaration of the nation's purpose to recognize the independence of 
the Philippine Islands as soon as a stable government can ,. 
be established," but demanded that coaling stations and government 
naval bases should be retained. In the spirit of this fhe^Phiib- 
declaration President Wilson in loi 3 granted to the islands pines in 

. > . 1913 

an increase of self-government by making his appoint- 
ments to the upper house of the legislature such that the natives 
would be in a majority in that body, and by throwing many other 
oflfices open to them. 

Essentially the same plan of government was established in Porto 
Rico as Congress set up in the Philippine Islands, here too with 
serious conflicts of authority. The clash in Porto Rico 
between the lower house of the legislature on the one government 
hand, and the governor and the upper house on the other, IP. ^°^o 
became so bitter that at one time the lower house refused 
to vote the appropriations necessary to meet the running expenses of 
the government. The affairs of the island government were dead- 
locked until the Congress of the United States availed itself of a course 
of action worked out by the British in their long experience in colonial 
affairs, and by a new act provided that it would be lawful in such a 
crisis for the authorities of the United States in Porto Rico to assume 
that the appropriations voted by the island legislature for the preceding 
year were also voted for the coming year. 

Porto Rico has prospered under the control of the United States. 
Whereas, when she came into the possession of the United -., 
States in 1898, there was but one building in the. island prosperity of 
erected for school purposes, in 19 13 there were three hun- °^° °' 
dred and seventy-five school buildings. In the first year of United 
States administration 26,000 pupils were enrolled in the schools, but 
in 1915 over 160,000. There were 170 miles of macadamized highways 



484 A WORLD POWER 

in 1S98, but in 191 5 over 660 miles of good roads. The exportation of 
sugar, the staple crop of the island, has increased from 68,000 tons 
in igoi to 380,000 tons in 191 5, the total foreign commerce from 
$17,000,000 yearly to $86,000,000. 

The same progress has followed the control of the United States in her 
The other Other possessions. She now holds in all 8000 islands, which 
island support a population of 10,000,000, or more than the en- 

possessions. ^j^.^ population of the United States a century ago. The 
commerce of these islands with the United States exceeds $325,000,000, 
or as much as the total commerce of the United States in 1850. 

The inhabitants of Louisiana, Florida, Texas, California, Alaska, and 
Hawaii became citizens of the United States by the annexation of their 
The consti- territory. In the case of the inhabitants of the Philippine 
tutionai Islands and Porto Rico the treaty of cession to the United 

new island States did not confer citizenship, but the question of 
possessions, their status was left to be decided by the Congress 
of the United States. Acts of Congress have accordingly declared 
these inhabitants citizens of their respective islands but not citizens of 
the United States. The Dred Scott Decision had maintained that the 
Constitution of its own force and with all its provisions extended to all 
the lands of the United States. After the Spanish War of 1898 the 
Supreme Court decided that certain parts of the Constitution did not 
necessarily extend to all the country's possessions, in other words that 
the Constitution did not necessarily follow the flag. Congress was 
therefore in a position to exercise over the various islands any form of 
government it saw fit, subject to the approval of the Supreme Court. 
Says a prominent legal authority: Congress has full power "to take 
such action as it deems best regarding the government, administration, 
and fundamental laws of dependent territory, whether that territory 
be mainland or be an island in the Pacific. ... In the exercise of 
this power Congress is under no obligation to adopt any rules of 
general application, but may modify its action as in its judgment 
seems wise, in order to meet varying conditions." 

THE PEACE MOVEMENT 

The fears of the anti-imperialists of 1 898-1 900 that a rising war 
spirit would accompany the participation of the United 

conference States, in world politics were fortunately not realized. 

18M^^^^"^' 'There arose, instead, a world-wide movement in favor of 
international peace and arbitration, not originating in the 

United States but powerfully aided by her sympathy and cooperation. 

In i8qo the Czar of Russia invited the nations of the world to meet 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 485 

in The Hague, Holland, to confer as to the best methods of lessening 
the number of wars and their cruelties. Twenty-six governments, 
including the United States and most of the states of Europe, were 
represented. Tentative agreements were formulated concerning the 
laws of war on land and sea, and concerning international arbitration. 
Declarations, signed by most of the leading powers, were made against 
the throwing of projectiles from balloons, against the use of projec- 
tiles filled with poisonous gases, and against the use of dumdum bul- 
lets which expand or flatten upon striking. 

The United States was quick to support the international court of 
arbitration recommended by the conference. The settlement of dis- 
putes by this method had been common in her history, -pj^g inter- 
From Washington to McKinley fifty-seven treaties of national court 
arbitration were entered into by the United States, the at The 
most noteworthy being that in connection with the Ala- Hague, 
bama claims, and after the establishment of the new court, from 1900 to 
igog, twenty-four more such treaties were negotiated. The interna- 
tional court of arbitration, which now meets in a beautiful peace 
palace at The Hague, erected by the American multimiUionaire, Andrew 
Carnegie, has settled almost a score of international questions, some 
of which might otherwise have led to serious consequences and even 
to war. The first case to come before the court arose out of a dis- 
pute between Mexico and the United States over the "Pious Fund," 
a charitable fund dating from the early days of Spanish rule in Califor- 
nia. This fund had first been under the control of the Jesuits and then 
of the Franciscans, from whom it had been taken over first by Spain and 
then by the new republic of Mexico. By way of indemnityMexico had 
promised to the church authorities payment in perpetuity of six per 
cent on the capital confiscated, but the payments had ceased when Cali- 
fornia passed to the United States. On behalf of the church the United 
States demanded settlement from Mexico, and by the award Mexico 
was forced to pay $1,420,000 and thereafter $43,000 annually. 

In 1910 the same tribunal brought to an end the century-old dis- 
pute between the United States and Great Britain over the respective 
rights of the two nations on the fishing grounds of the The settle- 
Grand Banks off the coast of Newfoundland. By the Ha^e o?^^ 
treaty of Paris, 1783, the right of the United States to the dispute 
fish in certain parts off the Newfoundland coasts was Britain'^over 
recognized. Great Britain claimed that these rights fishing 
were annulled by the War of 181 2 and were not renewed Newfound- 
by the treaty of Ghent. The United States contended '*°*^- 
that these rights could not be annulled by this war, as they were 



486 A WORLD POWER 

enjoyed by the colonists before 1776 and were therefore independent 
of a treaty. Various treaties on the subject from time to time defined 
the respective rights of the two countries, but disputes continued, 
till at length they were submitted to The Hague tribunal. The deci- 
sion allowed Great Britain to make reasonable rules to govern the fish- 
ermen on the Banks, but prevented her from subjecting the fishermen 
of the United States there to unjust dues and from forbidding them to 
enter British ports to buy bait and supplies and to dry their fish. 
The moral effect of the award was the more impressive from the fact 
that the representative of the United States on the board of arbitra- 
tion voted against the leading contentions of his own country. 
The boun- ^^ i9°3j by a special court of arbitration appointed 

dary line of by the United States and Great Britain, the boundary line 
settled by between Alaska and the Dominion of Canada was finally 
arbitration. settled. 

After these signal triumphs of arbitration, as remarkable as that 
of the Geneva award on the Alabama claims and the settlement of the 
The Taft dispute over the seal fisheries of the Alaskan waters, 

arbitration President Taft gave himself ardently to the extension 
of the general principle of arbitration by the negotiation of 
comprehensive peace treaties both with Great Britain and with France. 
The Roosevelt arbitration treaties with these two countries, igo8, had 
expressly stipulated that only " differences of a legal nature" should be 
submitted to arbitration at the Hague, that is, "differences that do not 
affect the vital interests, the independence, or the honor of the two con- 
tracting parties." The Taft treaties, 191 1, submitted to the same arbi- 
tration "all differences . . . which are justiciable in their nature by 
reason of being susceptible of decision by the application of the prin- 
ciples of law and equity." Quarrels, however, it was argued, would 
arise over the interpretation of " justiciable," particularly as to whether 
differences concerned with the "vital interest" of the Monroe Doctrine 
were justiciable; and President Taft's agreements were never ratified. 

The Wilson administration had not been in office six months before 
it proceeded to negotiate a series of treaties, which sought to serve the 
The Wilson cause of international peace by a different plan, called 
peace "diplomatic postponement." More than a score of 

rea les. nations, including Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and 

most of the republics of Central and South America, have formally 
accepted such treaties with the United States, which provide, first, 
that "all disputes ... of every nature whatsoever, to the settlement 
of which previous arbitration treaties or agreements do not apply in 
their terms or are not applied in fact," shall be referred to a permanent 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 487 

international commission for investigation and report; second, that 
the commission shall have one year in which to complete its work; 
and third, that the two nations concerned shall not begin war on one 
another over the question under consideration before twelve months 
shall have elapsed. It is believed that the interim will give national 
passions time to cool and in most cases prevent war. Moreover, the 
permanent commission, ready to act at all times, is empowered by the 
treaties to investigate the questions in dispute, whether the embroiled 
nations seek its good offices or not. 

In 1905, after Japan and Russia had been at war with one another 
for more than a year over their respective rights in Korea and Man- 
churia, President Roosevelt induced both powers to send The treaty of 
representatives to the United States to discuss terms of Portsmouth, 
peace. They met at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and succeeded in 
reaching terms that brought the war to a close. For these services in 
the cause of international peace President Roosevelt was awarded 
the Nobel prize of $40,000, granted yearly from the income of the 
estate left by Alfred Nobel, a Swedish scientist, to men who distinguish 
themselves in science, letters, or international affairs. The same honor 
was later conferred on Elihu Root, Secretary of War and Secretary of 
State under President Roosevelt and afterward United States Senator 
from New York, for his work in behalf of international peace. 

As champion of peace President Roosevelt suggested the calling of a 

second peace conference at The Hague in 1907, but he yielded to the 

Czar of Russia the honor of actually extending the call. ^, 

_, . , . , . , The second 

Forty-four governments were represented m this second The Hague 

conference. The deliberations of the conference, held in P^^ce 
the home of the permanent court of international arbitra- 
tion, resulted in the formation of tentative agreements, all subject to 
ratification by the nations, touching such subjects as arbitration, the 
employment of force in the recovery of international debts, the manner 
in which wars shall be opened, the laws and customs of war on land and 
on sea, the rights and duties of neutrals, submarine mines, bombard- 
ment, and the creation of an international prize court. Most of these 
articles were ratified by the leading nations of the world. A third 
conference was recommended to be held at The Hague in 191 5, but 
because of the outbreak of war in Europe in 1914 this did not convene. 
While the first peace conference at The Hague achieved the creation 
of the international court of arbitration, the second con- 
tributed the recommendation of a Supreme Court of the Court of the 
World, not to supersede the existing tribunal but to sup- World 
plement it. The difference between award by arbitration 



488 A WORLD POWER 

and award by a court is obvious. When arbitration is resorted to, 
the parties in dispute select from a permanent Hst of arbitrators, 
appointed by the different nations, certain referees to settle their con- 
troversy; the board is not the same body in any two cases, the decision 
is not made in accordance with definitely established principles of law, 
and the principles of any one case do not necessarily apply to any other 
case. A Supreme Court of the World, on the other hand, would con- 
sist of judges appointed for a term of years; it would convene regularly 
and in it the same body of men would pass upon the different cases and 
administer the regularly accepted rules of international law; a single 
case would not be decided out of connection with the other cases before 
the court, but precedents would grow up for the guidance of the judges. 

Said General Grant in 1879: "Although educated and brought up as 
a soldier, and probably having been in as many battles as any one else. 
General Certainly in as many as most people could, take part in, yet 

Grant on there never was a time nor a day when it was not my 

desire that some just and fair way should be established 
for settling difficulties, instead of bringing innocent persons into 
conflict, and withdrawing from productive labor able-bodied, men, 
who in a large majority of cases have no particular interest in the 
subject over which they are contending. I look forward to a day 
when there shall be courts established that shall be recognized by 
all nations, which will take into consideration all differences between 
nations, and settle by arbitration or decision of such courts, their 
questions." 

The Supreme Court of the World has never come into existence 
and many difficulties will doubtlessly be encountered in inaugurating 
it; but that the first step has been taken in the direction of the creation 
of a Supreme Court for all peoples, the dream of centuries, is an indica- 
tion of progress toward the unity of mankind. 

THE PANAMA CANAL AND OTHER INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 

The territorial additions to the United States at the close of the 
nineteenth century, like those of the middle of the century, directed 
„. . public attention to the desirability of improving transpor- 

demand for tation facilities between the Atlantic and the Pacific by 
Pacifiifcanal ^^^ construction of an interoceanic canal. The attitude 
in Central of the nation toward the original plan of 1850 for a joint 

" ■ control over such canal with Great Britain underwent a 

change in the next half century. The presence of the French in 
Mexico during the Civil War brought a new realization to Americans 
of what it might mean to the nation to have a strong European 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 489 

power secure lodgment in Central or South America. This apprehen- 
sion was presently accentuated by the expenditure of $300,000,000 
by the French in their attempt to build a French Atlantic-Pacific 
Canal at the Isthmus of Panama, and again by the aggressive attitude 
shown by Great Britain toward a weak American republic in the 
Venezuelan boundary episode. A strictly national canal was coming 
to be the demand of the country. The war with Spain came on, and 
at the outset the largest and best battleship of the United States, the 
Oregon, needed in Cuban waters but located of¥ San Francisco, was 
obliged to make a voyage of 12,000 miles around South America before 
she could go on the duty which was desired of her. Via the proposed 
canal, either at Nicaragua or at Panama, Cuban waters were removed 
from California only about 4000 miles. The voyage demonstrated 
the military value of the proposed canal, and the necessity to the 
United States of exercising sole control over it. 

As in 1850, so at the end of the century, the most popular of the 
proposed routes ran through Nicaragua, over which hovered, like a 
forbidding spirit, the Clayton-Bulwer treaty with its _,j^ , 
stipulation that Great Britain must be taken in as a tion of the 
partner if the canal should be located there. How to get 5^1^°"" 
rid of the treaty became an all-absorbing question. Presi- treaty by 
dent McKinley and after him- President Roosevelt, pauncefote 
through their Secretary of State John Hay, took the treaty of 
initiative, and out of the resulting negotiations with Great 
Britain came the Hay-Pauncefote treaty, 1901. By the terms of the 
new treaty that of 1850 was "superseded," and it was agreed that 
the canal, by whatever route, "may be constructed under the auspices 
of the government of the United States alone," and that "subject to 
the provisions of the present treaty, the said government shall have 
and enjoy all the rights incident to such construction." 

The question still remained, which route, Nicaragua or Panama? 
Events followed rapidly. Committees of Congress and commissions 
appointed by the President investigated the relative 
merits of all proposed routes and both houses of Congress route, 
debated the subject. One commission, headed by Panama or^ 
Admiral Walker, reported in favor of locating the water- 
way in Nicaragua, and then suddenly changed its recommendation in 
favor of Panama when it was ascertained that the French Panama 
Company, which was still in existence, would dispose of its rights and 
all its property still remaining in Panama for $40,000,000. Congress 
authorized the buying out of the French company and the location of 
the canal along the old French route in Panama, then a part of Colombia 



490 A WORLD POWER 

(once New Granada), if the right of way could be secured; and if Colom- 
bia would not grant this, the route through Nicaragua was to be 
chosen. Colombia was offered $10,000,000 outright and $250,000 
yearly for the grant to the United States of certain rights over a 
strip of land for the canal, but probably hoping for more generous 
terms she turned a deaf ear and adjourned her Congress, October 31, 
1903, without accepting the offer. Within a few days Panama, in a 
bloodless revolution, declared herself independent of Colombia, and 
President Roosevelt hastened to recognize the new state as a free and 
independent nation. Panama herself then speedily concluded the 
desired treaty with the United States, giving to the latter power com- 
plete sovereignty over a strip of land across her territory ten miles wide. 
Panama secured practically the same compensation as was offered to 
Colombia, and made sure for herself the commercial benefits that she 
feared through Colombia's delay would slip away to Nicaragua. The 
United States gained the concession that it desired; but both nations 
were criticized for the unseemly haste of their actions, and President 
Roosevelt did not escape the accusation that he had aided and abetted 
the revolution in Panama to further his country's welfare. 

Dirt began to fly on the Isthmus in the spring of 1904; and in 1913 
the first ship passed through the waters of the canal. The excavation 
The canal is fifty miles long, with a channel ranging from 300 to 
completed. ipoo feet wide, ample to accommodate the largest of the 
world's ships. Twelve locks lift the ships from level to level. In spite 
of the fact that at one time as many as 39,000 people were at work 
on the undertaking, the heavy mortality attending the construction of 
the Panama Railroad in the fifties and of the attempted French canal 
in the eighties was obviated. The engineers in charge of the work, 
with Colonel George W. Goethals of the United States army at their 
head, demonstrated the efficiency of modern methods of sanitation in 
the elimination of disease. Fever stricken and deadly fifty years ago, 
when the railroad was put through, to-day the canal zone is practically 
free from fever. In the warfare on the disease-bearing moscjuitoes the 
swamps have been drained, the houses carefully screened, hospitals 
erected, and pure water secured. The estimated cost of the canal is 
$375,000,000, while in addition many millions have been expended 
upon the fortification of the waterway. 

In 191 2 Congress passed a law for the government of the canal, which 

The question ^'^^ then rapidly nearing completion. The act exempted 

of tolls on the coastwise shipping of the United States, for example 

vessels sailing from New York to San Francisco, from the 

payment of all tolls in passing through the canal, and levied tolls on 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 491 

the foreign shipping of the United States, for example, vessels passing 
from New York to the cities on the west coast of South America, and 
on all foreign ships passing through the canal. Both while the bill was 
under consideration in Congress and after it had been enacted into law 
by the signature of President Taft, Great Britain interposed vigor- 
ous objection to any difference of treatment in the matter of tolls 
for her vessels and those of the United States. She based her 
objections on the Hay-Pauncefote treaty of 1901. The preamble 
of this treaty contained the words, "without impairing the general 
principle of neutralization established in article VIII" of the Clayton- 
Bulwer treaty of 1850. In other words, the Hay-Pauncefote treaty of 
1 901 continued the general principle of neutrality of the treaty of 1850, 
in accordance with which an Atlantic-Pacific canal, wherever built, 
was to be "open to the citizens and subjects of the United States and 
Great Britain on equal terms." Moreover, the British urged, in the 
first of the six rules adopted by the United States in the Hay-Pauncefote 
treaty "as the basis of the neutralization of such ship canal," there 
were these words, "The canal shall be free and open to the vessels of 
commerce and of war of all nations observing these rules, on terms of 
entire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any 
such nation, or its citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or 
charges of traffic, or otherwise." For these two reasons Great Britain 
claimed that canal tolls at Panama, imposed on the vessels of the 
United States, could not be lower than those imposed on the vessels of 
Great Britain. 

The crux of the debate which followed in the spring of 1914, when 
President Wilson asked Congress to repeal the toll exemption clause 
of the law of 191 2, was the meaning of the phrase "all The decision 
nations" in the rule already quoted. The friends of of Congress, 
discrimination in tolls claimed that all nations that were not owners 
of the canal, that is, all other nations than the United States, were 
meant, while those who urged the repeal of unequal tolls insisted that 
"all nations" included the United States. Congress took the latter 
view and repealed the discrimination in favor of her coastwise ships, 
though the repeal was so worded as not to "waive or impair any right 
of the United States under such treaties . . . with respect to the 
sovereignty over or the ownership, control and management of said 
canal and the regulation of the conditions or the charges of traffic 
through the same," so that it is possible that the question may come 
up again at some future time. All vessels now using the canal pay 
the same tolls. 

Presidents Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson have made efforts to con- 



492 A WORLD POWER 

elude a treaty with Colombia to compensate her for the loss of her 
seceded district, Panama. The proposal now pending 
of compen- before the Senate of the United States provides that the 
a)\'omb?a United States shall not only pay to Colombia $25,000,000, 

for the loss but shall also express to her regret for the events of the 
o anama. revolution of Panama in 1903. 

Hardly had the government completed its work at Panama when it 
embarked on the construction of a huge trunk line railroad in Alaska, 
A eovern- ^^^ thousand miles long, designed to open up the resources 
ment railroad of the territory to outside trade. It is the first experi- 
m as a. ment on a large scale of the government ownership of 
railroads in the United States. In prosecuting the undertaking the 
President will employ army engineers and will use the Panama canal 
machinery and equipment, while the rates of traffic on the road, when 
completed, will be not only regulated but fixed by the Interstate 
Commerce Commission. 

The canal in Panama and the railroad in Alaska are striking illus- 
trations of the change that has come in the last seventy-five years 
in the attitude of the government toward internal improve- 
doc^trkie of ° ments. In Jefferson's time, when the opening of the 
public im- new western frontier beyond the AUeghanies demon- 
arthTeTx^ ^ strated the necessity of the improvement of transpor- 

pense of the tation facilities such as roads, bridges, and canals, the 
nation. . , ^ r- 1 1 1 i 1 

United States at first consented to undertake the work. 

It then drew back and the states directly affected took up the task. 
When the states found the difficulties confronting them too heavy after 
the panic of 1837, the national government slowly returned to its origi- 
nal policy, first through grants of land to the states themselves to be 
disposed of by them for the support of private companies; then by direct 
gifts of land to the companies engaged in making the improvements, 
as in the case of the Union Pacific railroad; and finally, after the Civil 
War, by making many improvements itself. Millions of dollars, 
sometimes hundreds of millions, are now expended by the national 
government every year on rivers, harbors, bridges, public buildings, 
and other improvements. 

The states themselves are almost as lavish as the national govern- 
State im- rnent in the support of strictly state works. At the present 

provements time New York is engaged in expending $100,000,000 in 
in New York. jj^pj-Qy^g her canal system, and an equally large sum in 
the improvement of hundreds of miles of state highways. 

Cities, too, undertake mammoth works, that would have seemed 
incredible half a century ago. New York City, which is at work on an 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 493 

extensive underground system of transportation facilities, which will 
in the end cost hundreds of millions of dollars, has just -j-j^g ^^^ 
brought to completion an aqueduct, which as an engineer- aqueduct 
ing triumph may almost be compared with the Panama 
Canal. The canal at Panama is fifty miles long and has cost 
$375,000,000. The aqueduct of New York from the Catskill Moun- 
tains has cost $175,000,000, and is more than one hundred miles 
long. It includes four reservoirs, fifty miles of tunneling through the 
solid rock, fifty-five miles of cut and cover tunneling, and ten miles 
of steel pipe construction. The mountain waters are first gathered in 
the Ashokan reservoir, twelve miles long, one mile wide, and in some 
places one hundred and ninety feet deep, in the construction of which 
thirteen miles of railroad track were removed, thirty miles of highway 
re-located and seven villages removed. At Storm King Mountain, four 
miles above West Point, the water is plunged underneath the Hudson 
River in a siphon tunnel cut out of the solid rock, reaching one thou- 
sand one hundred feet below the level of the river. Thence south to 
New York City, through the entire length of Manhattan Island and 
across to Long Island the water runs in the longest rock tunnel in the 
world, in some places hundreds of feet below the level of the city. The 
present consumption of water in New York City reaches 500,000,000 
gallons per day, and the new system furnishes more than double this 
supply. 

THE MONROE DOCTRINE 

With the assumption of her new role in world politics, and with a 
permanent investment at Panama of $375,000,000 to 
safeguard, the United States finds the Monroe Doctrine portance of 
still an important tenet of its national policy, though J^o^trine'^"^ 
fraught with increasing difficulty of application. 

Supported by the military and naval power of the United States, 
the Monroe Doctrine has proved successful in securing to the southern 
republics opportunity to continue their national develop- Difficulties of 
ment free from outside influence, at the very time of application. 
Africa's ruthless partition and China's hardly less bitter fate. There 
are, however, dangers in the vagueness of the doctrine, and in the 
invitation which it seems to extend to the southern republics to be 
reckless in their foreign relations, upon the almost certain knowledge 
that the United States will step in to protect them from too vigorous 
action on the part of the outside powers. How far to go in awarding 
protection, what to allow the nations of Europe to do in South America 
and what not to allow them to do, as they seek redress for grievances 



494 A WORLD POWER 

from the protected states, are perplexing national problems. Extreme 
caution must also be exercised by the United States to avoid wounding 
the pride of the younger nations, especially of the three powers of 
Argentine, Brazil, and Chile, the "A. B. C. " powers of South America, 
which are to-day strong nations. Bismarck, the great German states- 
man, characterized the Monroe Doctrine as a piece of "international 
impertinence"; ex-President Taft has termed it "international phi- 
lanthropy," while the South American republics themselves gen- 
erally look upon it with suspicion. 

P . In giving her adherence to the principle of arbitration 

of the Mon- promulgated at The Hague, the United States gave 
roe Doctnne. ^^^^^^ ^^ ^.j^g world that she did not in any way abandon 

the Monroe Doctrine. 

In 1902-1903, less than ten years after the United States had pro- 
tected her from the aggressions of Great Britain, Venezuela was 
, again involved in difficulties with European powers, 
troubles Citizens of Germany, Great Britain, and Italy had claims 

m*n ^Great '^^ ^^^ ^^^ injuries which they had received during 
Britain, and revolutions in that country and for deferred interest on 
Italy. Venezuelan bonds. Venezuela refused arbitration in the 

matter, and after Germany had given formal notice to the United 
States that she did not intend to acquire territory in Venezuela the 
three powers joined in a "pacific blockade" of four Venezuelan ports, 
including the mouth of the Orinoco River. The fleet of the allies cap- 
tured that of Venezuela and bombarded her coast in three places. 
All South America and Central America were alarmed, lest the epi- 
sode serve as a precedent and financial intervention in American 
affairs by European powers lead to territorial occupation, conquest, 
and the utter breaking down of the Monroe Doctrine. Dr. Luis 
Drago, Foreign Minister in Argentine, dispatched a note to Presi- 
dent Roosevelt in which he formulated what might be regarded as 
an addition to the Monroe Doctrine. He urged "that a public debt 
cannot give rise to the right of intervention, and much less to the 
occupation of the soil of any American nation by any European power." 
Drago believed that in making loans creditors took into consideration 
the chances of getting their money back and made terms accordingly; 
he admitted that a debtor state should pay its debts, but contended 
that, guided by considerations of its own honor and future credit, it 
should be allowed to pay these debts in its own manner, free from 
intimidation from outside powers. 

President Roosevelt did not accept the Drago Doctrine. In a 
message to Congress he took the position that the United States 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 495 

would not go to war to prevent a European nation from collecting its 
just debts in South America, providing that the punishment inflicted 
on the offending state did "not take the form of acqui- 
sition of territory on the American continent or the ^'^®^''*®°j*, 
islands adjacent." In accordance with this principle, rejection of 
the United States could not allow a foreign state to en- DocSfnl.^ 
force the payment of its debts by taking possession of a 
South American customhouse. 

It was the part of wisdom for the United States to formulate some 
plan to secure the payment of the debts and if possible avert a crisis. 
After the blockade of Venezuela had gone on for a year. 

President Roosevelt induced Venezuela to come to terms, Settjement 

'of the Vene- 
and the claims of the three powers of Europe and of all zueian ques- 

other powers against Venezuela were submitted to a ^bitration. 
commission for examination, which brought in a report 
that only one-fifth of the claims were genuine and that even those 
of the citizens of the United States were many times too large. Vene- 
zuela satisfied her creditors in compliance with the award. 

In 1904, when certain European powers were again contemplating 
forcible collection of debts, this time from the negro republic of Santo 
Domingo, President Roosevelt, fearful of the consequences 
if the action of the European powers toward Venezuela of^he^M°on- 
were allowed to be repeated and thus to establish a prece- roe Doctrine 
dent, decided, in the name of the United States, to take DonS.ngo. 
charge of the finances of the island till these were straight- 
ened out. First, by a working agreement with Santo Domingo, which 
did not require the sanction of the Senate of the United States, and 
later by a formal treaty, the President appointed a receiver for the 
little island republic, under whom its financial affairs are still adminis- 
tered. Both the creditors of Santo Domingo and the island itself are 
satisfied, and at the same time the dangers of a repetition of forcible 
collection of debts by European powers are warded off. 

The forcible collection of debts by an outside nation was brought 
forward by the United States as a topic for discussion at the second 
conference at The Hague. Most of the nations of the _, „ 
world subscribed to the rule there adopted, that armed rule on for- 
force should not be used for the recovery of contract debts i"ctfon°of 
save when the debtor state refused either to accept international 
arbitration or to abide by an award of arbitration. 

The Pan-American policy of President Taft, like that of President 
Roosevelt, was pitched on a high plane of good will and friendship to 
all America. He proposed and carried out the mediation of the 



496 A WORLD POWER 

United States, Argentine, and Brazil, which prevented war between 
Peru and Ecuador, when the opposing armies of these two countries 
were marching on one another. By his kindly offices 
Doctrine President Taft also prevented war between the two island 

d°^f T^ft^^'' republics of Hayti and Santo Domingo, and he composed 
a civil uprising in Nicaragua. He proposed treaties with 
the last named republic and with the neighboring state of Honduras, 
under which the United States was to assume the control of the finances 
of these two states, after the manner of the arrangement in Santo 
Domingo and for similar reasons; but these two treaties have never 
been ratified by the Senate of the United States. 

Following the precedent set by President Roosevelt, who had sent 
his Secretary of State, Elihu Root, to attend the Pan-American Con- 
gress at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1906, President Taft 
Secretaries sent his Secretary of State, Philander C. Knox, on a long 

in South ^Q^j- through South America. By their many public ad- 

Amenca. . ° . 1 • ^ 

dresses m the various southern republics the two Secre- 
taries helped to increase the growing spirit of good will between 
North America and South America. 

In the summer of 191 1 the Mexicans were in revolt against their 
President Diaz, who had been reelected seven times and was then 

serving his thirty-first year as the head of the republic. 
The I^exican . . . 

question His rule, though long maintained, had been arbitrary and 

under Presi- extremely conservative; the people had been oppressed, 
taxes had been heavy, and the ownership of most of the 
land had passed into the control of a few hands. Diaz was at last 
forced to resign and to leave the country. His successor. President 
Madero, stood for democratic views, for the distribution of the land 
and the extension of privileges to the people; but his hand was not 
strong enough to bring peace, and his two short years of rule were 
harassed by constant uprisings of the conservative classes. As the 
investments of the citizens of the United States in the mines, railroads, 
waterworks, and other enterprises in Mexico, amounting, it was esti- 
mated, to $1,000,000,000, were seriously affected by the continued 
strife, pressure on President Taft for armed intervention in Mexico was 
strong. Such a course would have meant war on an unfortunate neigh- 
bor, with all its attendant expense and horror, and the impairment of 
that peace and friendship which it was the ideal of the highest states- 
manship of the United States to cultivate with the sister republics of 
America. President Taft mobilized the army of the United States on 
the Texas border and patrolled the boundary line to insure strict 
neutrality, but with commendable firmness he did not cross the line. 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 497 

Under President Wilson the Mexican situation reached a more 
acute phase. In the very last days of the Taft administration Presi- 
dent' Madero was assassinated in the city of Mexico and 
General Huerta was installed in his place. Violent civil crisis under 

strife followed. The charge was made that Huerta was President 

° . Wilson, 

implicated in the killing of his predecessor, and Wilson 

refused to recognize as President of the sister republic one who had 
attained his position by assassination, although recognition was 
awarded him by the leading powers of Europe. Resentment among 
the conservatives of Mexico at this stand of President Wilson waxed 
hotter every day. On April 9, 19 14, United States sailors were ar- 
rested without justification at Tampico, Mexico, by the soldiers of 
General Huerta. The latter ordered the release of the prisoners within 
an hour and sent an apology and even an expression of regret over the 
incident to the authorities of the United States; but Admiral Mayo, 
in command of the United States fleet in the harbor of Tampico, be- 
lieved that the honor and the dignity of his country were not satisfied, 
and demanded from the Mexicans a salute of twenty-one guns to the 
United States flag. This Huerta refused. Citizens of the United States 
had suffered various indignities in Mexico, and the nation was begin- 
ning to chafe somewhat under President Wilson's conservative policy 
of "watchful waiting." The President at last decided upon a display 
of force in Mexico and with the support of Congress landed an army 
in Vera Cruz, Mexico, to compel Huerta to salute the flag. A score 
of the landing forces and many more Mexicans were killed, and war 
between the United States and Mexico seemed certain. 

At this point the value of Pan-Americanism was demonstrated. 
Argentine, Brazil, and Chile proposed mediation in the crisis between 
the hostile states, and their good offices were accepted, "a. b. C." 
The ambassadors at Washington from the three South mediation. 
American republics met with the representatives of the United States 
and Mexico at Niagara Falls in Canada and after some weeks of 
conference reached an agreement, looking to the adjustment of the 
difficulties, which was accepted by both parties. This among other 
things involved the retirement of Huerta. On July 15, 1914, Huerta 
resigned the Mexican presidency and departed from Mexico. Later 
in the year the United States withdrew its forces from Vera Cruz; 
but civil war still continued. The joint action of the South Ameri- 
can republics at Niagara, in line with the precedent in the previous 
administration, greatly strengthened the Pan-American movement. 
Finally, toward the end of 191 5, President Wilson interfered among 
the contending factions by officially recognizing General Carranza 



498 A WORLD POWER 

as the rightful President of Mexico and other nations followed his 
example. 

The growing national power of Argentine, Brazil, and Chile, and the 
increasing frequency of united action by the United States and the 
other American republics give emphasis to the proposal that the three 
large southern republics, if not all, be associated with the United States 
in support of the Monroe Doctrine. Such a united representation in 
any crisis would render the Doctrine more respected abroad and more 
popular on the American continent. 

In 1916, after Villa, the leader of a faction in Mexico, with a band 
United States °^ followers had crossed the border into New Mexico and 
troops in shot to death a number of American citizens, General 

Pershing was sent into Mexico with a division of soldiers 
to punish the outlaws. The bandit was not captured, but the outrages 
on the border ceased. 

THE FAR EAST 

In 1907, President Roosevelt sent a fleet of sixteen battleships on a 
voyage around the world. They passed through the Straits of Magel- 

Ian and stopped at San Francisco, Honolulu, and Manila, 
the fleet and at ports in Japan, China, and Australia, and returned 

worid^ *^® home through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea, 

visiting the leading countries of southern and central 
Europe. Though forty thousand miles were covered, not a ship was 
disabled, and the international prestige of the navy of the United States 
was greatly enhanced. 

The advantage of having troops in the Philippines to protect the 
eastern interests of the United States was demonstrated in difficulties 
The " Open which arose with the Chinese. The traditional friend- 
Door "in ship of the United States for China was tested on the 

occasion of the "Boxer" rebellion in China in 1900, which 
was an uprising of certain warlike Chinese societies against the for- 
eigners in their midst. Many Europeans and some Americans were 
massacred. In the national capital, Peking, the foreign legations 
were besieged by regular armed forces of the Chinese. When the 
British, German, Italian, Russian, French, Austrian, Japanese, and 
American soldiers at last succeeded in putting down the uprising, 
John Hay, the Secretary of State, made energetic efforts to prevent 
the European powers from disregarding the principle of the "open 
door" in China, that is, from taking, each one for itself, a "sphere 
of influence" in China, or in other words appropriating a section of 
the country in which each might enjoy rights superior to those of 
other nations. Hay believed in equal chances of trade to all for- 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 499 

eigners in China and special privileges to none, and by skillful di- 
plomacy he carried his point. As indemnity for the destruction of 
the life and the property of the foreigners China agreed to pay to the 
powers $300,000,000. The $24,000,000, which was the share of the 
United States in this vast sum, was so far in excess of her actual losses 
that she returned to China $13,000,000. At this exhibition of good will 
the government of China was moved to make use of the unique bene- 
faction in sending native students to the United States for education, 
and to-day, through these funds, hundreds of Chinese boys and girls 
are in attendance at American schools and colleges. A more effective 
means of promoting international good will could hardly be devised. 

"Dollar diplomacy," by which is meant the endeavor of diplomatic 
officials to advance the private commercial interests of their country- 
men, was resorted to by the Taft administration to " Dollar di- 
retrieve the declining fortunes of American commerce in piomacy." 
China. President Taft came to the conclusion that the greater pros- 
perity of the foreign commerce of other nations with that kingdom was 
in part due to the loans which the citizens of those countries made to 
China. Conditions were in many cases attached to such loans, as, for 
instance, that the money loaned must be expended in the purchase of 
commodities from the country whence came the loan. When in 1909 
British, French, and German bankers signed an agreement to finance 
the construction of an important Chinese railroad. President Taft, by 
direct personal application to the Chinese regent, secured to American 
bankers the right to participate in the loan. Emboldened by this 
success, the administration then embarked on three other policies which 
were not so successful. First, Taft proposed to the nations of the 
world to neutralize the railways of Manchuria and save them to China 
from outside spoliation; no nation accepted the proposal and out of 
resentment Japan and Russia, hostile to China's best interests and 
believing that Manchuria was their sphere of influence, drew closer 
together for mutual protection of their interests in China. Second, 
the United States proposed the building of a railroad in Manchuria by 
an international syndicate, but no other power seconded the proposal. 
Third, the Americans consented to participate with the "six power 
group " in lending $300,000,000 to the new republic of China which was 
set up in 191 2. Conditions were stipulated concerning the use of the 
money and the manner in which the revenue should be raised in 
China to pay the loan; one power even laid it down that China must 
use no part of the $300,000,000 in building railroads within her ter- 
ritory, and another that she must not expend any of the money on her 
army. China rejected the conditions as an infringement upon her 



500 A WORLD POWER 

sovereignty, but again asked the six powers for a loan of $125,000,000. 
While the negotiations over the new proposal were going on. President 
Taf t's term of ofi&ce expired, and one of the first acts of President Wilson 
was to withdraw the United States from the six power group. The 
new President did not believe, with his predecessor, that the diplomatic 
agencies of the government of the United States should be used to 
further private commercial interests. The new administration in 
Washington showed its friendliness, however, to the Chinese by 
recognizing the new republic which they had formed, as the national 
government of China. 

As in the Caroline affair in the middle of the century and in the 
trouble with Italy in Benjamin Harrison's administration, a state's 
Trouble action disturbed the cordial relations of the United States 

with Japan. with a foreign government in Roosevelt's and again in 
Wilson's administration. The legislature of the state of Califor- 
nia, where many Japanese were settled, proposed to pass a law for- 
bidding the Japanese to attend the public schools with the white 
children of that state and forcing them to attend separate schools. 
Japan was incensed at the seeming disrespect to her national dignity, 
and claimed that the proposed legislation was contrary to her treaty 
rights in the United States. Without committing himself on the wis- 
dom or the legality of California's step, President Roosevelt appealed 
to the state to desist before she involve the entire nation in a serious 
international crisis and possible war, and the law was not passed. In 
1913 the same state again brought the nation into difficulty; and this 
time, in spite of the protests of the administration in Washington, she 
enacted a law highly obnoxious to the Japanese. She forbade aliens, 
who were not eligible to United States citizenship, to own land within 
her borders for certain agricultural purposes, and thereby she debarred 
the Japanese among other peoples, without specifying them as a nation. 

An attempt is now being made to reach a solution of the difficulties 
of the two nations by the negotiation of a new treaty with Japan. 
A new Clashes of authority between the nation and the states, 

treaty in the conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States, 

projecte . ^-^^ probably persist in some form so long as the states 
have the power of alienating foreign governments beyond the power of 
the federal government to force them to desist, 

THE WAR IN EUROPE 

At the beginning of August, 1914, the greatest war in history 
broke out in Europe, between Germany and Austria, on the one hand, 
and Russia, France, Servia, England, Belgium, Montenegro, and Japan 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 501 

on the other. The latter, called the Allies, were later joined by Italy, 
while Turkey and Bulgaria cast in their lot with the Teu- j^^ ^^^_ 
tonic forces. President Wilson urged upon the United break of war 
States the strictest neutrality and held the nation to the '" "rope, 
principles laid down for neutral nations in Washington's Proclama- 
tion and now generally accepted as international law; but as in the 
Napoleonic wars a century before and in every other war, the interests 
of neutrals and belligerents clashed. 

In an attempt to isolate Germany, Great Britain blockaded the 
German ports on the North Sea, and in the course of the blockade 
she captured many American vessels and their cargoes, ^j^^ 
particularly in the enforcement of the doctrine of the con- blockade 
tinuous voyage, in accordance with which she seized all ° ermany. 
vessels the cargoes of which were probably destined for Germany, 
though billed to a neutral country neighboring to Germany, Holland, for 
example. The cotton interests of the Southern States suffered heavily, 
but Great Britain paid to them millions of dollars by way of damages. 

In striking back at her foe on the sea the German navy relied mainly 
on the newly developed submarine. She declared the waters around 
Great Britain a war zone, in which her submarines would ^^^ German 
sink all vessels, whether enemy or neutral. Here she submarine 
came into diplomatic collision with the United States, 
because the German Emperor asserted his right to torpedo a hostile 
merchant vessel without first exercising the arrest, visit, and search 
usually required by international law to determine the merchantman's 
identity, and without giving passengers and crew the opportunity 
to save their lives before the destruction of the vessel. The great 
Cunarder, the Lusitania, was suddenly sent to the bottom without 
so much as a moment's warning, and more than a thousand people on 
board, including over one hundred citizens of the United States, were 
drowned; and other great ships were sunk with serious loss of life. 

Against Germany's assumption of the right to mark off a war zone 

on the ocean. President Wilson contended that no one nation had a 

right to warn other nations away from any particular ^^ ^ 

. , , . , , . , 11 /^ The demands 

area of the high seas, which were common to all. Ger- of the 

many at last so far met the demands of the United States ^^^^^ 
as to consent to follow in her submarine warfare the 
ordinary rules of arrest, visit, and search, and to assure to the pas- 
sengers and crews of merchant ships about to be destroyed an oppor- 
tunity to escape. She also promised indemnity for the loss of American 
lives on the Lusitania. The demand for "disavowal" of this attack 
Germany did not meet. 



502 A WORLD POWER 

The Presidential election year of 191 6 found the nation still engrossed 
in the issues arising out of the great war, but not yet a party to the 
A War struggle. The Democrats, under the leadership of Presi- 

Eiection. (^^j^j- Wilson, entered the political contest, relying partly 

upon their record for constructive legislation but more especially upon 
their diplomatic avoidance of war. "He has kept us out of war" was 
blazoned on their posters. The Republicans, under ex-Governor and 
ex-Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes as candidate, favored 
a more vigorous defense of the nation's rights against the aggressions 
of the belligerents. The result was 277 electoral votes for Wilson and 
254 for Hughes. The Socialists secured no electoral vote but polled a 
popular vote of 590,000. 

By the purchase of the Danish West Indian Islands, consisting of 
the three considerable islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and Santa Cruz, 
The Virgin together with about fifty other very small islands, all 
Islands. situated a little to the east of Porto Rico, the United States 

on March 31, 191 7, consummated territorial acquisition that had been 
desired for half a century. Alaska had cost two cents per acre, the 
Philippines twenty-seven cents per acre, the Canal Zone $35.83 per acre; 
but the new acquisition, now called the Virgin Islands, cost $25,000,000 
or $295 per acre. The necessities of military and naval strategy justified 
the high price paid to Denmark. 

On February i, 191 7, Germany embarked on a policy of "unre- 
stricted submarine warfare," in accordance with which its submarines 
War with sent to the bottom "vessels of every kind — without warn- 

Germany. jj^g g^j^^j without thought to help or mercy for those on board, 
the vessels of friendly neutrals along with those of belligerents." Presi- 
dent Wilson at first recommended to Congress "armed neutrality," 
but this proved "impracticable" and, after an inspiring message from 
the President, Congress adopted his new recommendation and on April 6 
recognized a state of war with Germany. American war vessels were 
at once sent to European waters to cooperate with the allied fleet in 
patrolling against German submarines. Before the end of 191 7 over 
one hundred thousand American troops under General Pershing were 
in Europe and a million more were in training. Party spirit was laid 
aside and the country rallied to the support of the President as the 
nation's commander-in-chief in the crisis. 

The stress of war brought about a great increase in the powers ex- 
ercised by the federal government. The principle of the "selective 
War draft" was substituted for that of voluntary enlistment in 

Measures. j-j^g army. German ships in American ports were seized 
for government service and the Shipping Board began the construction 



THE UNITED STATES IN WORLD POLITICS 503 

of a great merchant marine. The supply of food and the manufacture 
of war materials were regulated and prices fixed. To raise the vast 
sums necessary for carrying on the war, Congress passed a tax bill 
which set a new record in the amount of revenue produced. In 
addition to this, approximately $7,000,000,000 was raised by popular 
subscription in two great Liberty Loans. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

H. Croly, Marcus Alonzo Hanna; Beard, Contemporary American History; E. 
Stanwood, Presidency, iSpy-igog; Latane, World Power. 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. The Philippine Islands. Latane, World Power, 82-100, and 153-175; D. C. 
Worcester, Philippines, Past and Present; H. P. Willis, Philippine Problem; A. 
Ireland, £a5ter» Tropics, 186-259; Sparks, iJ.v/'a«^/o«, 439-452. 

2. International Arbitration. Latane, ITorW Power, 242-255; A. P. Higgins, 
Hague Peace Conferences; Baroness von Suttner, Lay Down Your Arms; I. S. Block, 
Future of War. 

3. Panama Canal. Latane, World Power, 204-224; J. Bryce, South America, 
1-36; Epochs, X, 169-176; C. H. A. Forbes, Panama Canal Conflict; C. F. Adams, 
Panama Canal Zone. 

4. The Monroe Doctrine since 1898. Latane, World Power, 255-269; 
E. Root, Speeches in South America; International Relations of the United States, The 
American Academy of Political and Social Science, 19 14. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERIAL 

F. P. Dunne, Mr. Dooley in Peace and War, and Mr. Dooley in the Hearts of His 
Countrymen. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

What were the leading issues before the people in the presidential campaigns of 1900, 
1904, 1908, 191 2, and 1916? Why in some instances is a joint resolution of Congress 
preferable to a treaty, as a method of territorial annexation? Characterize and distin- 
guish the new eras in national life associated with the presidential administrations of 
Washington, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and McKinley. Compare the working of 
British colonial administration before 1776 with the working of the colonial adminis- 
tration of the United States after 1898. Make a list of the important international 
arbitrations in which the United States was concerned, 17S9-1915. What are the 
advantages of arbitration over war? Distinguish between the making of a treaty and 
arbitration. Make a list of the leading treaties of the United States, 1783-1915. 
Sketch the history of the Atlantic-Pacific canal project, 1846-1901. Give an estimate 
of the achievements of the United States in the tropics. Give a brief history of in- 
ternal improvements in the United States. What have been the greatest achieve- 
ments of Pan-Americanism since 1900? Why are the South American states suspicious 
i)f the Monroe Doctrine? 



CHAPTER XXIX 
PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 

PROSPERITY 

The panics of 1837, 1857, and 1873 ^^'^ esLch been followed more 
or less closely by periods of prosperity, and the panic of 1893 was no 
A"twobil- exception to the rule. Both prices and wages were high 
lion dollar" and rapidly advancing in the administrations of McKinley 
coun y. ^^^ Roosevelt down to 1907. In 1906 the mines of the 

country produced $94,000,000 worth of gold as against $46,000,000 
in i860, 25,000,000 tons of pig iron as against 820,000 tons in i860, 
and 370,000,000 tons of coal as against 13,000,000 tons in i860. 
The corn crop of 839,000,000 bushels in i860 reached 2,900,000,000 in 
1906, while in the same interval the wheat crop increased from 173,- 
000,000 bushels to 735,000,000 bushels. The "billion dollar" country 
of the late eighties, as measured by the appropriations of Congress, was 
a "two billion dollar" country by the time Roosevelt left office. 

The visitation of financial disaster which seems fated to recur at 
regular intervals of about twenty years, came again in 1907, which. 
The financial ^i^^ ^^^ years 1837, 1857, 1873, and 1S93, was a year of 
panic of widespread financial ruin. The trouble began in the 

summer of that year with the failure of several large manu- 
facturing establishments and banks in New York City in the last week 
of October. Commercial failures were numerous and widespread 
throughout the country, but the nation's prosperity rested on great 
natural resources and improvement soon set in. 

In the last half century the unconquerable prosperity of the United 
States has received numerous demonstrations in the swift recovery of 
g . different cities and sections from terrible disasters that have 

recovery of befallen them. On October 8, 1871, the city of Chicago 
citie^^" was visited by a conflagration which burned more than 

Chicago and two thousand acres of city blocks before it was checked. 
Eighteen thousand buildings, including a large part of the 
business section of the city, were reduced to ashes, two hundred mil- 
lion dollars' worth of property was destroyed, two hundred and fifty 
lives were lost, and one hundred thousand people were rendered home- 

504 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 505 

less. The city, the motto of which was, "I will," rose from the ruins 
greater and better, until to-day Chicago ranks next after New York 
as the most populous, the wealthiest, and the most influential city in 
the country. The next year a disastrous fire destroyed sixty-five 
acres of buildings in the wholesale district of Boston, inflicting a loss 
which reached eighty millions of dollars. 

In 1886 Charleston, South Carolina, was visited by a destructive 
earthquake. In 1889 Johnstown, Pennsylvania, was wiped out by a 
flood, in which two hundred lives were lost and property other 
destroyed to the value of $10,000,000. In 1900 a tidal disasters, 
wave destroyed a large part of Galveston, Texas. In 1904 much of 
the business section of Baltimore, Maryland, was burned and more 
than $50,000,000 worth of property destroyed. Yet all these afflicted 
sections repaired the ravages in a short time and entered upon new 
prosperity. In 1906 in San Francisco, California, from $350,000,000 
to $500,000,000 worth of property was destroyed by earthquake and 
fire together. Three-fourths of the city was ruined and 300,000 people 
rendered homeless; but within three years the city was practically 
rebuilt, and in 1915 received hundreds of thousands of visitors at a 
world's fair, held to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal. 

An unfailing sign of good times was the arrival in the United States 
in 1905 of over 1,000,000 immigrants, who invariably come to the 
country in large numbers in times of prosperity, and Heavy 
in smaller numbers during adversity. The number of immigration. 
immigrants did not reach 100,000 in any year till 1842; on the wave 
of the country's prosperity it mounted to 400,000 in 1854, with the 
panic of 1857 and the Civil War fell as low as 89,000, then rose again 
to 460,000 in 1873. Financial depression brought the number down 
to 138,000 in 187S, good times raised it to 800,000 by 1882, the next 
financial panic reduced it to 230,000 in 1898, after which it rapidly 
increased. The 1,000,000 mark was reached in 1905, 1906, and 1907, 
and again in 1910 and 1913. In these later days it is the southern 
instead of the northern countries of Europe as in the middle of the 
nineteenth century, that are the chief sources of immigration. 

In 1900 there were over 10,000,000 foreign born in the United 
States, or thirteen per cent of the total population. Basing its figures 
on the reports of the census bureau, the National Geo- Foreign 
graphic Magazine states that there are now in the United population. 
States 13,000,000 foreign born, which, including 18,000,000 born in 
this country, one or both of whose parents were born abroad, brings 
up to 31,000,000 the number of those in the United States whose 
parentage is foreign. One-third of the people of the country are 



5o6 



A WORLD POWER 



foreign or have parents who were born abroad. The city with the 
largest percentage of foreign born is Fall River, Massachusetts, with 
42.7 per cent; Lowell, Massachusetts, is second with 40.9 per cent, 
New York third with 40.8 per cent or 1,944,357, Boston, fourth, Pat- 
erson, New Jersey, fifth, Chicago sixth, and Bridgeport, Connecticut, 
seventh. 

When the immigrants arrive their standing under the law is that 
of aliens. The majority of them, however, seek naturalization and 
Aliens and become full American citizens. WTien they have taken out 
naturalized their first papers they are liable to military service for the 
United States in time of war; in general all aliens enjoy the 
right of protection in person and property against mobs and insurrec- 
tion, and they may bring suit in the federal 
and state courts like ordinary citizens; in 
most states they enjoy the right to hold 
land, though in some states this is denied. 
The right to vote, which is a matter deter- 
mined by state and not by federal law, 
is in most states given to immigrants only 
after they become citizens of the United 
States, though a few states allow aliens 
to vote if they have declared their inten- 
tion of becoming citizens in accordance 
with the terms of the national law on the 
subject. While the right to vote is be- 
stowed by state law, naturalization, or 
the granting of full citizenship, is regu- 
lated by national law. The requirement of a residence of five years in 
the country by a foreigner before naturalization has not been changed 
since the days of President Jefferson. Naturahzation papers are 
to be secured in the district and circuit courts of the United States 
and in certain state and territorial courts. Only "white persons" 
and persons of "African descent" may be naturalized; those of other 
races, and alien enemies, polygamists, and disbehevers in organized 
government are excluded. The applicant for citizenship must have 
"behaved as a person of good moral character" and must be "attached 
to the principles of the Constitution and well disposed to the good 
order and happiness of the same." All applicants must be able to 
read and write the English language. No naturalized citizen may be 
either President or Vice President, but in other respects the natural- 
born and the naturalized citizens are on a basis of civil and political 
equality. 




Per cent Distribution of For- 
eign-Born Population, 1910. 
Total Foreign-Born, 13,515,- 
886 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 507 

That immigrants contribute their part to the development of the 

country is evident in this industrial age as well as in the days of frontier 

building and of war; and they also share in her wonderful ^^ 

• A r 11 1 r The contn- 

prospenty. A few examples may be enumerated of men butions of 

who have arrived in the country without means and have ["^^^^^^h*^ 
succeeded in personifying in their individual experiences trial life of 
the marvelous progress of the nation from hardship and * ^ nation, 
struggle to affluence. Andrew Carnegie, who has amassed hundreds 
of millions in the steel industry, came to America as a poor boy from 
Scotland. Patrick Cudahy, head of a large meat packing establish- 
ment, James McCutcheon, James McCreery, Hugh O'Neil, and 
Alexander T. Stewart, prominent merchants of New York, were poor 
immigrants from Ireland; Frederick Weyerheuser and Herman Siel- 
cken, lumber and coffee merchants respectively, were poor immigrant 
boys from Germany; Henry T. Oxnard, head of the beet sugar industry, 
came from France, and Joseph Di Gorgio, head of the banana industry, 
and Simone Saitta, prominent in the lemon industry, from Italy, all 
without money but with the will to succeed. The new citizens have 
also achieved success in other than commercial lines. Knute Nelson, 
United States Senator from Minnesota, was born in Norway, Jacob 
A. Riis, writer and reformer, in Denmark, Michael Pupin, whose 
electrical experiments have contributed greatly to the success of the 
telegraph and the telephone, in Servia, Dr. A. A. Michelson, winner 
of the Nobel Prize for scientific work, in Germany, Samuel A. Gompers, 
President of the American Federation of Labor, in England, and Patrick 
Collins, ex-Mayor of Boston, in Ireland. 

The reconstructed Southern States, after the first years of struggle 
with poverty and readjustment to new industrial conditions, have won 
for themselves a share in the prevailing prosperity. In ^j^^ progress 
these states, including West Virginia, from 1880 to 1910 of the " New 
population increased from 13,000,000 to 23,000,000, the 
capital invested in manufacturing from $147,000,000 in 1880 to $1,000,- 
000,000 in 1900, the cotton crop from 5,700,000 bales in 1880 to 
15,000,000 bales in 1911, and the amount of cotton consumed in the 
Southern mills from 320,000 bales in 1880 to 2,300,000 bales in 1910. 
In the face of this marvelous record Southerners themselves are gen- 
erally agreed that the destruction of slavery was in the end conducive 
to prosperity. The Civil War not only emancipated the blacks but also 
.gave a chance to the poor whites, from whose ranks come many of 
the leaders of the "New South." In a typical manufacturing center 
of the South, Birmingham, Alabama, the increase in population, 
1900-1910, was from 38,000 to 132,000, or two hundred and forty- 



5o8 A WORLD POWER 

five per cent. Nashville, Tennessee, numbered 110,000 in 1910, New 
Orleans 340,000. 

The negro situation in the South has worked out differently from 
what was expected when Congress provided for the welfare of the 
blacks by constitutional amendment. Twenty-five years 
ern negroes after the withdrawal of the Federal troops from the South 
fh^"^ff^ °^ ^^ ^^77' which date has been accepted as marking the end 
of Reconstruction, political conditions had become such as 
would have aroused consternation in the North in the days immedi- 
ately after the war, for the ex-slaves had practically lost the ballot. 
On this point the Constitution of the United States has been 
effectively nullified by the laws of the Southern States themselves, and 
it is a phenomenon of interest that few white people either in the 
North or in the South offer serious objection. In 1877 it seemed 
that everything possible had been done to safeguard the negroes' lately 
acquired right of suffrage. In their favor was the fifteenth amendment 
to the Constitution, declaring, "The right of the citizens of the United 
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or 
by any state, on account of race, color, or previous condition of 
servitude." Practically the same provision was in the new constitutions 
of the Southern States, and Congress passed various laws to secure the 
same right. Yet one thing was lacking to render negro suffrage a suc- 
cess, and that was the cordial assent and sympathy of the white people 
of the Southern States. The spirit of the Ku Klux Klan, if not the 
society itself, survived, and within ten years after the troops of the 
United States had disappeared from their midst the Southerners 
began to register their opposition by formal changes in their state 
constitutions. Very rigid tax, property, and educational quaHfications 
for the suffrage were imposed, forbidding the vote to all unable to 
meet the qualifications; at the same time, in order not to bar out the 
whites by these restrictions, exceptions were made in some states in 
favor of all who had grandfathers able to vote before the adoption 
of the fourteenth amendment or some other date immediately 
after the close of the Civil War, while in other states the rigor of the 
law was informally lightened by the registration and election officials, 
who purposely asked difficult questions of the ignorant blacks seeking 
to qualify for the vote under the law and easy questions of the ignorant 
whites. The Australian ballot system, too, has served as an additional 
barrier against the ignorant black vote. The "grandfather clause" 
of Maryland and of Oklahoma was declared unconstitutional by the 
Supreme Court of the United States in 191 5. 

Meanwhile industrial education has been hailed as a far more 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 509 

effective solution of the negro problem than the suffrage. Already 

much has been accomplished along this line in the Tuske- 

gee, Hampton, and other Southern schools for the blacks, education 

At the present time over fifty per cent of the negroes of ^°'' ^^^ 

^ . negroes, 

the United States can read and write. 

The West is no longer merely a land of ranches, farms, and mines. 

It contains great cities. The older cities of the middle West — Chicago 

with a population of 2,185,000 in 1910, St. Louis with 687,- 

000, Minneapolis with 301,000, St. Paul with 214,000, of the 

and Denver with 21^,000 — have made rapid advances, western 

. . cities. 

The progress of the cities of the Pacific coast presents 

an astonishing record. According to the bureau of the census, three 
cities of California — San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Oakland — 
together numbered in igio almost 1,000,000; three cities of Wash- 
ington — Seattle with 300,000, Spokane with 100,000, and Tacoma 
with 100,000 — had a total of nearly 500,000. Portland, Oregon, had a 
population of over 200,000. The per cent of increase in population, 
igoo-1910, was well above one hundred per cent in all these Pacific 
cities except one, and in one, Los Angeles, it was over two hundred 
per cent. Although California and Oregon as states of the Union 
are scarcely fifty years old, and although Washington is still younger, 
the three states together have nine cities above the one hundred 
thousand mark. The growth of these centers of population portends 
the large part which the Pacific coast is destined to play in the 
commercial and economic life of the nation. 

The census of 19 10 showed not only extraordinary progress in the 
southern and western cities, but also in the more eastern cities and in 
the nation as a whole. Toledo, Buffalo, Detroit, and The census 
Cleveland, centers of the new automobile industry and "^ ^®^°- 
of the ever-growing Lake trade, increased respectively, 1900-1910, 
from 130,000 to 168,000, from 350,000 to 420,000, from 285,000 
to 465,000, and from 380,000 to 560,000, while Cincinnati and 
Pittsburg, on the Ohio River, reached in 1910, the one 360,000 and the 
other 530,000. Thus the Lake cities, including Chicago, whose boom 
did not come till after the completion of the Erie Canal, have made 
rapid strides in overtaking their old rivals on the Ohio and the Missis- 
sippi. Baltimore, which made a swift recovery from the conflagra- 
tion of 1904, numbered 560,000 in 1910, Philadelphia, 1,550,000, Boston 
670,000, and Greater New York, 4,765,000. The country as a whole, 
which had 3,900,000 inhabitants in 1790, 5,000,000 in 1800, and 31,000,- 
000 in i860, possessed a population of 91,000,000 in 1910. The rate of 
increase is enormous, though it is somewhat below that of the colonial 



5IO 



A WORLD POWER 



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PORTUGAL 







PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 511 

period from 1700 to 1760, which has been estimated to have been 
almost one hundred per cent every twenty years. 

Industrial prosperity has been a great stimulus to invention. 
Whereas approximately one million patents have been issued by the 
national government since 1789, more than one-third New 
of these were issued after the year 1900. For the seven inventions, 
years after 1907, 35,000 patents have been issued annually. The use 
of X rays, automobiles, and submarine boats was common by the 
beginning of the twentieth century. The heavier than air aeroplane, 
which thus far has been of more service in war than in peace, was 
perfected by the Wright brothers of Dayton, Ohio, in 1903. Wireless 
telegraphy, which now encircles the earth, enabling men to com- 
municate with each other over great distances, and endowing 
ships with the means of exchanging messages with one another and 
with the land, was invented by the Italian scientist, Marconi, in 1901. 
An ocean cable was completed across the Pacific to the Philippines in 
1903, while the human voice is now heard over the telephone from 
New York to San Francisco. 

In the field of education the nation's expanse has been commen- 
surate with its growth in other lines. Colleges both for men and for 
women have been endowed with sums which a half century Education 
ago would have been considered fabulous. Universities and 
have been enabled to encourage research, the state 
universities of the West have made themselves great forces in the educa- 
tional world, agricultural schools and other institutions for technical 
training have multiplied, and in the elementary schools vocational in- 
struction has received emphasis. Literature can boast of such names 
as William Dean Howells, Bret Harte, Henry James, and Francis 
Marion Crawford among writers of fiction; Sidney Lanier, Eugene 
Field, James Whitcomb Riley, and Walt Whitman among poets; 
Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) the humorist, and Henry Adams, 
James Ford Rhodes, Edward Channing, John Fiske, and John Bach 
McMaster, historians. 

From i860 to 1913 the total imports of the United States had in- 
creased from $350,000,000 to $1,800,000,000, the total exports from 
$315,000,000, to $2,425,000,000, an increase in imports and Foreign 
exports of over five hundred per cent. By far the most ^''^^e. 
valuable single article sold abroad is cotton, exports of which in 1913 
were worth $550,000,000. One-third only of the cotton crop is con- 
sumed at home. The increase in the value of the exports of manu- 
factured goods ready for consumption, which was almost two thousand 
per cent from i860 to 1913, is a testimony to the nation's progress in 



512 A WORLD POWER 

manufacturing. In i860 manufactured goods ready for consumption 
made up one-ninth of the total exports of the country, in 1915 one-third. 
The United States has not only surpassed its own past record, but 
has outstripped all the other nations of the earth in material progress. 
The United ^-^d is now recognized as the world's wealthiest nation. 
States, the Her accumulated wealth of over $1 c;o,ooo,ooo,ooo in 

world s ^ J / J 

wealthiest 1 9 14 was more than double that of France and nearly 
nation. double that of Great Britain or Germany. A distin- 

guished British authority wrote in the Statist of London, comment- 
ing on the rapid economic progress throughout the world in the 
nineteenth century: "But if the economic welfare of the oldest coun- 
tries has improved in this remarkable manner, the progress of the 
new countries is still more noteworthy. For the most part, the per- 
sons who migrated to them were inconceivably poor and destitute, and 
these have attained incomes and wealth much greater on the average 
than persons who elected to remain in the older countries. During 
the last one hundred years the wealth of the United States has in- 
creased from about $1,750,000,000 to something like $150,000,000,000, 
or nearly 8,500 per cent, and the income has risen from less than 
$500,000,000 to about $35,000,000,000 a year (6, goo per cent), while 
population has grown from 8,000,000 to 98,000,000, an expansion of 
1,125 per cent. The progress of the other young countries has been 
small in comparison with the growth of wealth in the United States. 
. . . No group of countries has derived greater advantage from the 
credit system than the various agricultural states of the new world, 
which have obtained vast supplies of capital from Europe. It is 
evident that the young countries would have developed very slowly 
if they had been unable to borrow the capital needed by immigrants to 
place them on the land and in the mines, and thus to gain access 
to the inexhaustible supplies of natural wealth which these countries 
contain. The amount of capital obtained by the United States from 
abroad is calculated to reach $6,000,000,000." Foreign capital, there- 
fore, as well as wonderful natural resources and immigration, miay be 
reckoned among the leading factors in the progress of the United States. 

CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH, AND TRUST REGULATION BY THE 
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 

Capital took advantage of the prosperity after 1900 to perfect its 
organization into larger and larger units. The growth of corporations, 
first noticeable in the time of the Civil War, reached its height dur- 
ing Roosevelt's presidency. In 1899 there were approximately sixty 
corporations having a capital of from $1,000,000 to $5,000,000 each, 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 513 

but in the two years, 1899-1901, under the leadership of J. Pier- 

pont Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, E. H. Harriman, 

and other "captains of industry," almost two hundred of corporate 

slant trusts were formed, the combined capital of which organization 
° . . of industry, 

reached $4,000,000,000. In 1901 a single corporation, the 

United States Steel Corporation, was formed which at the present time 
has a capital of approximately $1,400,000,000. By January i, 1908, 
the total capitalization of all corporations was $31,000,000,000, which 
represented an advance of fifty per cent in four years. The Amal- 
gamated Copper Company, the General Electric Company, the Inter- 
national Harvester Company, the American Telegraph and Telephone 
Company, and a score or more of railroads each possess a capital 
of over $100,000,000, and many other companies are capitalized at 
$50,000,000 or over. 

The railroads furnish a striking instance of the centralizing tenden- 
cies in the industrial world. At the opening of the twentieth century 
there were the Vanderbilt system of 20,000 miles of road Railroad cen- 
from New York to Wyoming, covering the region of the traiization. 
Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi Valley, the Pennsylvania system 
from Philadelphia to Chicago controlling 14,000 miles, the Morgan 
system from New York to New Orleans with 12,000 miles, the Morgan- 
Hill system of 20,000 miles from Chicago and St. Louis to the Pacific, 
the Harriman system of 19,000 miles from Chicago to the Gulf and 
San Francisco, the Gould system of 14,000 miles from the Middle West 
to the Gulf, and minor combinations as well, till almost every small 
railroad was engulfed in some large system. 

An authority on the subject of the trusts wrote in 1904: "They are 
all allied and intertwined by their various mutual interests. For in- 
stance, the railroad interests are on the one hand allied The trust 
with the Vanderbilts and on the other with the Rocke- situation, 
fellers. The Vanderbilts are closely allied with the Morgan group, and 
both the Pennsylvania and the Vanderbilt interests have recently 
become the dominating factors in the Reading system, a former Mor- 
gan road and the most important part of the anthracite coal combine, 
which has always been dominated by the Morgan people. Viewed as a 
whole, we find the dominating influences in the trusts to be made up of 
an intricate network of large and small capitalists, many allied to one 
another by ties of more or less importance, but all being appendages to 
or parts of the greater groups which are themselves dependent on and 
alHed with the two mammoth, or Rockefeller and Morgan, groups. 
These two mammoth groups jointly constitute the heart of the 
business and commercial life of the nation." 



514 A WORLD POWER 

The Pujo report, submitted to the House of Representatives in 1913, 
declared that the firm members and directors of five banking houses in 
The Pujo New York City held 118 directorships in 34 banks and 

report. trust companies having total resources of $2,679,000,000 

and total deposits of $1,983,000,000. Counting the banks, trust 
companies, insurance companies, transportation systems, manufactur- 
ing and trading concerns, and the public service corporations, with 
which they were connected, the money trust, as this handful of men 
came to be called, held 341 directorships in 112 corporations having 
aggregate resources or capitalization of $22,245,000,000. 

A great achievement of the Roosevelt administration was to bring 
to a head the popular unrest in national affairs, and to institute reform, 
Trust regu- through the executive and legislative branches of the 
lation under government, of many of the abuses complained of by the 
people, chief among which was the oppression of combined 
capital. President Roosevelt's crusade against the trusts was based on 
the obvious fact that, under the new industrial regime as then de- 
veloped, the advantage was on one side, with more benefits falling to 
the owners of the giant corporations than to the army of laborers. 
Greater power of supervision over business enterprises and their actions 
was assumed by the government. The Meat Inspection Act provided 
that no meat should be sent out from meat packing houses into 
other states or to foreign countries without federal inspection. The 
Pure Food Law closed interstate and foreign commerce to adulterated 
or misbranded foods and drugs, and forbade their manufacture in the 
District of Columbia and the territories. The Hepburn Rate Law 
was passed in 1906, giving the Interstate Commerce Commission 
greater power in the regulation of railroad rates and authority to 
dictate how the roads should keep their books. 

In his public utterances President Roosevelt drew a distinction 
between the good and the bad trusts; he placed among the latter those 
that reaped huge benefits "in restraint of trade or com- 
of the Sher- merce among the several states" and in the former cate- 
man Anti- gory those that did not attempt complete monopolies and 
unreasonable increase of prices "in restraint of trade." 
Against the bad trusts he instituted over forty suits at law under the 
Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which till then had gone practically unen- 
forced. One of these suits, directed against the merger or union of the 
Northern Pacific Railroad and the Great Northern Railroad on the 
ground that such a merger was "in restraint of trade among the several 
states," resulted in the dissolution of the combination, and exercised 
much influence in preventing other such unions. In another suit, 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 



515 



directed against the Standard Oil Company, for its alleged unfair cus- 
tom of demanding from the railroads, as a condition of its continued 
patronage, rebates or the return in part of the freight charges pre- 
viously paid to the railroad company for services rendered, a fine of 
$29,000,000 was imposed on the company for its "restraint of trade." 
The decision was later reversed by the Supreme Court of the United 
States, and the line was never paid. 




A Modern Meat-Packing Plant 
The Chicago Plant of Armour and Company; the largest in the world. 



In 1910 Congress passed the Mann-Elkins Act, which brought inter- 
state telephone, telegraph, and cable companies under the jurisdiction 
of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Perhaps the Trust reeu- 
most far-reaching part of the act was that which con- lation under 
ferred on the Commission the authority to suspend pro- 
posed advances in railroad rates, pending an investigation of their 
propriety, thus placing an effective check on the great railroad com- 
panies. As an immediate application of this new power, the Com- 
mission, after an investigation of the expenses of railroad management, 
forbade the railroads to advance their rates; but in 1914, after another 
investigation, it allowed an advance. In 1915 it ordered reductions 
in the rates of the coal-bearing roads of Pennsylvania. Interstate 



5i6 A WORLD POWER 

express companies, electric railways, sleeping car companies, and pipe 
line and water line carriers have also been placed under the super- 
vision of the Commission. 

President Taft, like his predecessor, waged unremitting warfare on 
the trusts, so far as was within the power of his executive office. No 
other administration had brought so many suits against 
of the'^S^er^* "big business" as were instituted from 1909 to 1913. 
man Anti- An important case against the tobacco trust and another 
under Taft. against the Standard Oil Company were won by the 
government, and an order was secured from the court in 
each case breaking up the corporations in question, though the dis- 
solution accomplished little. The Supreme Court in Taft's time also 
handed down a decision dissolving the union of the Union Pacific 
Railroad with the Southern Pacific, and another holding that the 
Sherman Anti-Trust Law forbade "corners" in the market. 

The Sherman Anti-Trust Law was first interpreted as prohibiting 

all interstate combinations in restraint of trade, whether these were 

_ . reasonable or unreasonable; but in the oil and tobacco 

Trust regu- 

lation under cases the court established the ruling that only those 

^^The corporations violated the law which "unduly" restrained 

Watch trade. Again, in 191 5, in the Watch Trust case, the court 

rus case. further applied the rule of reason by asserting that a 

corporation that controlled even as high as eighty per cent of the trade 

in a particular commodity was not necessarily breaking the law. Said 

the court, " It is reasonable to say that when a large business has proved 

itself to be beneficial and not harmful to the community, it should not 

be condemned because it is large." 

Later, in the year 191 5, the national tribunal refused the petition 

of the United States government for the dissolution of the United 

States Steel Corporation, although this trust was capi- 

United talized at $1,402,846,000 and controlled over one hundred 

States Steel q^^^ eighty companies. Said the court, "The real test 
Corporation. ^ , . , . ,-1 1 • i • • i 1 

of monopoly is not the size of that which is acquired but 

the trade power of that which is not acquired. ... If mere size 
were the test of monopoly and trade restraint, we have not one but a 
half dozen unlawful monopolies in the large department stores of 
a single city." Plainly the court is now more conservative than for- 
merly in its attitude toward the trusts, and is not inexorably set 
against big business as such. 

In 1902 the labor unions found themselves confronted by the 
Sherman Anti-Trust Law, when they attempted to compel a firm of 
hat manufacturers in Danbury, Connecticut, to recognize the power 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 517 

of the union. The firm were running their factory on a non-union 
basis, employing whomsoever they chose. A boycott de- 3, The 
clared against the firm and their goods by the United Hat- labor unions 
ters of North America seriously affected the firm's business Sherman 
in other states as well as in Connecticut. Thereupon the ^*^*- 
factory brought suit against the two hundred and forty members of 
the local hatters' union on the ground that the boycott, in restraining 
interstate trade, was in violation of the anti-trust law. The case 
was in the courts for twelve years. In 1913 the United States Circuit 
Court of Appeals ruled against the hatters and awarded the injured 
factory $252,000, and in 191 5 the Supreme Court upheld the decision. 
The position of the court was that the Sherman Anti-Trust Law ap- 
plied to combinations of laborers in restraint of interstate trade, as 
well as to combinations of capitalists. 

The vagueness of the Sherman Anti-Trust Law, which did not 
specifically designate any particular acts as constituting restraint of 

trade, threw upon the courts the task of interpreting and 

1 • ^u 1 • . A ^1 . 4. The Clay- 

applymg the law m concrete cases. As soon as the- courts ton Anti- 

began to exercise their immense power under the law '^/Vlii'^^ 
they achieved a reputation for arbitrariness and drew upon 
themselves bitter criticism. In an effort to meet this situation the 
Clayton Anti-Trust Law was passed in 1914 to supplement the 
Sherman Act by specifying particular acts as constituting restraint of 
trade. In the first place, though the phraseology of the new law is 
itself vague on the point, labor unions are declared not to be "illegal 
combinations or conspiracies in restraint of trade under the anti- 
trust laws," so that, if the law could have been retroactive, the 
Danbury hatters would probably not have lost their case. Price 
discriminations are forbidden, as also are "tying contracts," by 
which the manufacturer sells an article with the restriction that 
the purchaser shall not use articles made by a competitor. The ban 
is likewise placed on holding companies, on interlocking direc- 
torates under certain conditions, and on injunctions by the courts 
restraining people from quitting work. 

The first regular session of Congress under President Wilson 
abolished the Bureau of Corporations set up under President Roosevelt 
in 1903 and gave over its functions and some new duties g ^j^^ -pj-ade 
to a new Trade Commission. This commission is directed Commission 
to prevent persons, partnerships, and corporations, ex- 
cept banks and common carriers, from using unfair methods of compe- 
tition in commerce. It will receive reports from all corporations with 
a capitalization of $5,000,000 or more not under the Interstate Com- 



5i8 



A WORLD POWER 



merce Commission. It will investigate corporate activities, make pub- 
lic reports, hold hearings if there is reason to believe that unfair 
methods are being used, and issue orders if the parties are found 
guilty. The Commission may also assist the courts in dissolving 
illegal combinations under the Sherman law. 

THE PROGRESS OF LABOR 

The menacing growth of the trusts has not bred as great violence 
among the laboring classes as might be expected. The great pros- 
The laboring perity, which has been the lot of the country as a whole, 
classes. jg g^ partial explanation of the phenomenon. Agricul- 

tural and industrial unrest after 
1900 has not permeated national 
politics as in the last decade of 
the nineteenth century. Not that 
labor has meekly yielded; it has 
waged many a bitter strike, but 
with increasingly favorable re- 
sults. Organization of the forces 
of labor has confronted the organi- 
zation of capital and has fre- 
quently won the day. 

In 1902 occurred one of these 
mighty combats between capital 
and labor that af- 
fected all sections 
and classes of the 
country. Nearly one 
hundred and fifty thousand hard 
coal miners of Pennsylvania left 
their work and wages under the 
leadership of John Mitchell, Presi- 
dent of the United Mine Workers 
of America, to battle against their 
numerous grievances, chief among 

which were low wages and long hours. Their proposal of arbitration 
was spurned by the mine owners, and for six months the whole coun- 
try suffered from a shortage of coal. President Roosevelt felt con- 
strained for the sake of the public to offer his services to bring about 
a settlement of the difficulty, and he succeeded in inducing represen- 
tatives of both sides to come together in his presence in the White 
House and pledge themselves to accept the findings of a board of ar- 



The Penn- 
sylvania coal 
miners' 
strike. 




John Mitchell 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 519 

bitration which he himself was to appoint. The findings of the board, 
generally in favor of the strikers, finally brought the strike to an end. 
The cost of the strike to all parties directly concerned was estimated 
at $100,000,000, while the indirect results to the country at large, as 
measured in the high price of coal and the losses occasioned by the 
inability of many individuals and manufacturing concerns to secure 
any coal at all, cannot be estimated. 

A bitter strike the next year in the Cripple Creek coal mines of 
Colorado attracted wide attention both on account of the many acts of 
violence on the part of the strikers and the stern methods Later 
used by the militia to restore order. Strikes of the strikes. 
Lawrence, Massachusetts, textile workers in 191 2, and of the Pater- 
son, New Jersey, silk operatives in 1913 disturbed the nation. The 
Colorado coal strike in 1914-1915, characterized by particularly violent 
action on the part of both strikers and state authorities, demonstrated 
that both capital and labor still had serious difficulties to adjust. 

An important step toward the prevention and settlement of strikes 

was taken in 1913, when Congress by a unanimous vote passed an 

arbitration act for railroads and their employees. This ap- T^g Railroad 

plies to strikes of men actually employed in moving trains Employees 
r . , , , JT \i -4. iu • . 1 Arbitration 

m mterstate commerce. Under it there was appomted Act under 

by the President a Board of Mediation and Conciliation, Wilson, 
which has succeeded in settling some strikes by its own mediation, 
while in others, under its supervision, a board of arbitrators has been 
appointed and required to make its report in ninety days. The first 
case handled by the board prevented a strike in 19 13 by the 92,000 
conductors and trainmen of the forty-two eastern railroads; a year later 
the board brought together ninety-eight trans-Mississippi railroads 
and their 60,000 dissatisfied engineers and firemen. In this latter case 
a strike was prevented, which in the crisis of the opening months of 
the European war would have been a calamity of incalculable mag- 
nitude. Over twenty-six railroad controversies have been settled by 
the board. A division of conciHation in the Department of Labor at 
Washington has prevented a number of strikes in various lines of 

industry. 

THE TARIFF 

In the Roosevelt administration, after the panic of 1907, in addition 
to the distress caused by the panic, there was keen discomfort occa- 
sioned by the continued rapid rise in prices. While wages or salaries 
remained the same or advanced but slightly, prices for the necessi- 
ties of life and especially for manufactured products were mounting 
higher and higher. It was becoming increasingly difllicult for the 



S20 A WORLD POWER 

people to make both ends meet. While the increase in the supply of 
The demand ^°^^ ^'^^ doubtless the leading cause of this phenomenon, 
for a revi- the favors bestowed by the tariff on the great trusts seemed 
tariff "after ^^ ^^^ popular mind a grievous cause. These could be 
the panic of reached through politics, and accordingly a demand arose 
for the revision and reduction of the tariff. This demand 
was incorporated in the platform of the Republican party in 1908, and 
the people looked to the newly elected administration for relief. 

Congress met at the special call of President Taft in the spring of 
1909, struggled for five months over the problem, and finally passed 
The tariff the Payne-Aldrich Law. A feature of the law which 

under Taft. appealed to the people was the corporation tax, which was 
a tax of one per cent on the income of all corporations the yearly net 
earnings of which were above $5000. As a tariff measure the new 
law failed to satisfy the demands for downward revision, since many 
of the new rates were higher than the old ones. In the Republi- 
can party itself a constantly growing element, known as the Insurgent 
Republicans, were extremely dissatisfied with the new law and with 
the alleged conservative tendencies of the administration. The fol- 
lowing campaign of 19 10 for the election of members to the House of 
Representatives was fought out on the vexed question, and so great 
was the dissatisfaction over the Payne-Aldrich Law that the Demo- 
crats, who stood for a lowering of the tariff rates, received a heavy 
majority in the new House over the Regular Republicans, who defended 
the Payne-Aldrich rates. In the next two years the Democrats used 
their power in Congress to pass several special tariff bills lowering the 
rates on single articles, such as woolen goods, cotton goods, steel, and 
iron, each of which measures encountered the veto of the President, who 
championed the rates of 1909. In framing these laws Congress had 
the benefit of the report of the Tariff Commission, which had been 
appointed by the President, with the sanction of Congress, to ascertain, 
if possible, by an investigation of the cost of manufacture at home and 
abroad, what would be just rates of tariff on imported articles. 

To conciliate the friends of a low tariff, President Taft sought to 
put into operation a treaty of reciprocity with Canada. This was 

. . not a new idea. There had been reciprocity, or mutual 

free trade, with Canada, in certain articles in the late 
fifties and early sixties of the nineteenth century; at the suggestion of 
Secretary Blaine there was reciprocity with certain southern countries 
in the McKinley Tariff Act, and the same plan was embodied in the 
Dingley Act. The approval of Canadian reciprocity by Congress in 
191 2 was considered a triumph for the administration, but the desired 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 521 

arrangement never went into effect because the Dominion of Canada, 
through fear that reciprocity would mean the economic dependence of 
Canada upon the United States, refused its assent. 

Like President Taft, President Wilson called Congress together in 
special session soon after his inauguration to consider the tariff, and 
after another long struggle a downward revision was The tariff 
accomplished by the Underwood Tariff Act. The free under Wilson, 
list was greatly extended. An important change wrought by the 
law was the levying of a progressive tax on incomes. Since the court 
in Cleveland's time had declared such a tax unconstitutional. President 
Taft had paved the way for the passage of the measure by forcing 
through Congress and submitting to the people a constitutional 
amendment making such taxation allowable, and this amendment was 
embodied in the Constitution early in 1913. A tax of one per cent 
was levied on all incomes over $3000; for married couples living to- 
gether the amount exempt was $4000. An additional tax of one per 
cent was levied on all incomes over $20,000 and not exceeding $50,000; 
two per cent on all over $50,000 and not exceeding $75,000; three 
per cent on all over $75,000 and not exceeding $100,000; four per 
cent on all over $100,000 and not exceeding $250,000; five per cent 
on all over $250,000 and not exceeding $500,000; and six per cent on 
all over $500,000. The salary of the present President of the United 
States, 1913-1917, of all judges of United States courts then in office, 
and of all state and municipal officers, was to be exempt. The new tax, 
along with the corporation tax, which was carried over from the Payne- 
Aldrich law into the new act, constitutes an important attack on the 
high tariff wall, for, if successful, it will reveal a new source of national 
revenue, to be borne by those who are best able to contribute to the 
support of the government, and it will make the demand for revenue 
from the tariff less urgent. Moreover, since the income tax is a direct 
tax, which the people realize they are paying into the treasury of the 
government, it may be expected that Congress will be held to stricter 
accountability and to a wiser and more economical use of public money. 

NATIONAL BANKING LAWS 

The National Banking Act of 1863 never fully satisfied the financial 
needs of the country. In a time of financial stringency, when men 
hoard their money and bankers and individuals are slow ^j^g National 
to make loans, it is desirable that the national banks have Banking Act 
the power of issuing new paper money quickly. This 
they could not do under the old law, by the provisions of which notes 
could be issued only on the basis of a deposit of United States 



522 A WORLD POWER 

bonds in the treasury of the United States; it was difficult and some- 
times impossible to obtain these bonds in an emergency. The Aldrich- 
Vreeland Act of 1908 aimed to remedy this defect by allowing the 
national banks to issue notes upon a deposit of state, county, or 
municipal bonds, and under certain circumstances upon security of the 
notes of sound private parties. The plan did not work out in practice, 
and the special session of Congress called by President Wilson in 1913 
considered the question again, while it was at the same time putting 
the Underwood Tariff Law on the statute books. In December, 1913, 
the Federal Reserve Act was passed. Under this law the United 
States is divided into twelve districts, in each of which is located a 
Federal reserve bank, which is not a bank for ordinary depositors but 
rather a bank for banks. In this reserve bank the individual bank 
must make a deposit of a certain proportion of its reserve, if it would 
be a member of the system and share in its benefits. If the member 
bank desires to increase the amount of its circulating notes, it can do so 
immediately by selling to its reserve bank "commercial paper," that 
is, the notes of individuals it may be holding, and receiving in return 
from the reserve bank "reserve notes" to circulate as money. Such 
an emergency currency is elastic and quickly issued. A private in- 
dividual can neither borrow from a reserve bank nor make deposits 
in it, but the United States may deposit its revenue, if it wishes, in the 
reserve banks and draw checks upon them. 

THE POST OFFICE 

Down to 1900 three important changes had been made in the post 
office since the Civil War : the penny postal card was introduced in 1873, 
Post Office the rate of letter postage was reduced in 1883 from three 
reforms. |-q ^^q cents for half an ounce, and in 1885 for an ounce, 

and rural free delivery was inaugurated in 1897. In the four 
years of President Taft's administration two more innovations were 
inaugurated. First, postal savings banks were opened in the post 
offices of the cities and the larger towns for the accommodation of 
those who wished a place of deposit for their money, in which they 
would feel more confidence than in the ordinary deposit banks and 
savings banks, though the rate of interest paid by the government on 
deposits was low. Second, on January i, 1913, the post office began 
the operation of a parcel post or express business for the transmission 
of small packages at rates generally far below those charged by the 
express companies. The government fixes the charges for its services 
by the zone system, in accordance with which the amount charged 
increases as the distance increases. 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 523 

CONSERVATION 

With his insight into the history and conditions of the West, derived 
from a sojourn of several years in that section, President Roosevelt 
directed public attention to the nation's wasteful use of its 
forest and mineral lands. Formerly, under the generous under 
policy of the government, these had either been given to i^°°^,®^®^*- 
private corporations or sold at very low rates. Though 
under such a system the country was rapidly developed, the feeling 
slowly arose that the system, advantageous though it might be in a 
frontier country, was too lavish and too wasteful. Presidents before 
Roosevelt had had the power and had exercised it, to withdraw the 
timber lands on the public domain from sale, in order to preserve them 
from immediate and wasteful consumption; but Roosevelt took advan- 
tage of the prerogative to a greater extent than had any of his predeces- 
sors. There are to-day over one hundred and fifty forests in the United 
States reserved by the government, with an area exceeding 162,000,000 
acres; of this, Roosevelt is responsible for the reservation of 150,000,- 
000 acres. The Appalachian Forest Reserve Law of 191 1 provided 
funds for the purchase by the United States "of land for national forests 
on the watersheds of national streams." This will enable the national 
government to acquire forests in the Eastern States, and thus to inaugu- 
rate there as well as in the West, a system of national forest conserva- 
tion. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Washington have large state 
forest reserves. For preserving the soil and for preventing sudden 
floods, as well as for perpetuating the rapidly diminishing lumber 
supply, forest conservation, as now administered by the forest service 
of the Department of Agriculture, is of immense national importance. 

By an act of 1910 and by previous acts the President may also with- 
draw from sale the mineral lands of the public domain; the law even 
separates the surface of coal lands fit for agriculture from Mineral 
the mineral beneath the surface, and allows the separate ^^J^^s. 
disposal of each. Many thousands of acres of mineral lands have now 
been withdrawn from sale by the nation, and also by a few of the states. 
The opponents of such a policy claim that progress is blocked by 
holding the public lands in reserve, and that these lands would be more 
rapidly developed in the hands of individuals. 

The Reclamation Act of 1902, known also as the Newlands Act, set 
aside the proceeds of the sale of the public lands in sixteen western 
states as a special fund with which to irrigate arid lands . . , , 
in these states, while the irrigated lands themselves were 
to be sold at low rates and the proceeds devoted to further reclamation. 



524 A WORLD POWER 

Twenty-eight irrigation projects were completed in eight years at a cost 
of $70,000,000, and nearly two million acres of waste lands thereby 
brought under cultivation. Some of the western states have gone 
into the same work, for example, Idaho, which has constructed one of 
the largest irrigation canals in the world and reclaimed over 300,060 
acres of waste land. Utah also is engaged in extensive undertakings 
along the same lines. 

The general policy of conservation of natural resources embraces 
also the water power of rivers and streams. This great power of 
Water nature, man's servant from the earliest days, was found 

power. |-Q ]3g especially valuable for the production of electricity, 

which can easily be transmitted for use fifty to one hundred miles away. 
Under President Roosevelt Congress abandoned its former policy of 
granting perpetual water power sites recklessly, and now such sites 
are carefully granted for a term of years and at a specified rental. 

So firmly convinced was President Roosevelt of the wisdom of 
united action in conserving national resources that he called together 
jjjg at the White House, in 1908, a meeting of the governors of 

"House of all the states and a few other prominent men, whose 
advice would be valuable, to exchange views on the 
subject and secure the cooperation of the states with the national 
government in the work. Since that time the governors have met 
in regular annual session to discuss matters in regard to which 
uniform action by the states is desirable. The "House of Govern- 
ors" possesses no legislative or other powers, but as an advisory 
body it has a wide influence. Among the subjects discussed in these 
meetings, in addition to the preservation of the forests, streams, and 
mineral lands, are such matters as uniformity in marriage and divorce 
laws, and laws on bills and notes, the improvement of factory condi- 
tions, and the prevention of child labor. 

The Taft administration incurred disfavor in some quarters on 
account of its attitude toward the conservation measures adopted in 
Conservation the previous administration. Led by Gifford Pinchot, at 
under Taft. |^j^^^ time head of the forestry bureau, a loud remonstrance 
arose when it became known that the President proposed to allow the 
sale to private individuals of certain immensely valuable coal-bearing 
lands in Alaska, which would result, it was charged, in the creation 
of a monopoly in the mining of coal in the territory. Secretary Bal- 
linger of the Interior Department, who had the matter in charge, was 
accused of negligence. After a long and sensational congressional 
investigation of the whole matter he was allowed by the President 
to resign. 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 525 

By the admission of New Mexico and Arizona into the Union during 
Taft's term of oflfice, the last portion of territory, except Alaska, 
within the continental limits of the United States entered Forty-eight 
the sisterhood of states. A federal government, which states, 
in one hundred and twenty-five years has added thirty-five new 
states to the original nucleus of thirteen, and at the same time has 
preserved its original form without serious change, has proved 
the wisdom of its founders. Alaska, too, was started on her road to 
statehood by her organization as a territory in 1913. 

THE CIVIL SERVICE 

At the beginning of the operation of the Civil Service Reform Act 

President Arthur applied the new rules to 15,000 positions; President 

Cleveland extended them to SS,ooo more, and President ^, , , 

^'f' 1 rr- Resume of 

Roosevelt to 87,000 more. Among the offices placed the system 

under the rules by Roosevelt were many of those con- yfcg'r^'f^^'^' 

nected with the government service in the Philippines, the up to Presi- 

United States forestry service, rural free delivery, work of ^^ ^ - 

the Panama Canal, together with 15,000 fourth class postmasterships. 

President Taft showed himself a firm friend of the merit system in 
the public service by maintaining the system as handed down to him 
by his predecessors, and extending it to assistant post- Extension of 
masters, post office inspectors, and 30,000 more fourth the system 
class postmasters. Friends of the reform seek amendment "^ ^^ 
of the law, that its benefits may be extended to all the higher 
offices in the government, which are not strictly political in their 
nature, that is, to such positions as those of the more important post- 
masters, the United States district attorneys, and the United States 
marshals. The demand is also made that a system of old age pensions 
be adopted for those who devote their life to the public service, that 
dabbling in politics and attempts to influence legislation by office- 
holders be strictly forbidden, and that the frequent exceptions to the 
rules, made by order of the President, be stopped. 

Under President Wilson the system has been maintained, though 
when a party which has been out of office sixteen years -pj^^ ^.j^j 
comes into power, the pressure is tremendous for a service under 
division of spoils. ^°°' 

THE PENSION SYSTEM 

In Roosevelt's administration not only was the pension service 
extended by executive order on the eve of the presidential campaign 
of 1904, but an act of Congress in 1907 awarded a pension to every 



526 A WORLD POWER 

Union veteran over sixty-five years of age. This was what is called a 

. service pension, and was paid to every soldier applying 

system for it, even though he stood in no need of aid and had 

under received no wound or hurt while in the service. The 

Roosevelt. 

pension bill for the year 1909 reached $165,000,000. 

In 1912 three-fourths of the Northern army of 1861-1865 were dead, 
yet the government in this year devoted $180,000,000 to the care of 
The system the survivors, or $20,000,000 more than the expense of the 
under Taft. British navy in this year and only $20,000,000 less than 
the cost of the German army in the same year. Another act of Con- 
gress in 191 2 raised the rates once more, so that veterans of three 
years' service at the age of sixty- two were granted $16 per month, 
at sixty-six $19, at seventy $25, and at seventy-five $30, and all 
wounded or disabled in the service $30 per month. Pensions for 
veterans of the Confederate army are provided by many of the 
Southern state governments. 

CHANGES IN THE NATIONAL GOVERNMENT 

Two of the old Populist demands for changes in the form of the 
national government were embodied in the Constitution as the six- 
Two consti- teenth and seventeenth amendments early in the year 1913. 
tutionai By the one, Congress was given power to lay and collect 

amen men . ^g^^gg ^^ incomes from whatever source derived, without 
apportionment among the several states according to population, as the 
Constitution originally prescribed that all direct taxes should be ap- 
portioned, and, as we have seen, Congress availed itself, that same year, 
of this amendment by laying an income tax. The other provided for 
popular election of United States Senators, instead of election by the 
state legislatures as was originally provided by the Constitution. The 
acceptance of these changes, advocated in the last cjuarter of the nine- 
teenth century by the parties representing agrarian and industrial un- 
rest, proved that although a distinct national party had been abandoned 
by these classes, their strength was asserting itself in the existing parties. 
During the Taft administration the growing forces of the Insurgent 
Republicans asserted their power in the national House of Representa- 
tives, in alliance with the Democrats, by forcing two im- 
ttie rules of portant changes in the parliamentary rules of that body, 
the House Speaker Cannon, against whom the revolt was chiefly 
tatives^^^^"' aimed, had exercised, to be sure, only the same powers as 
had been in the hands of Speaker Reed in the previous 
decade; but whereas the latter succeeded in holding his party 
following loyal to his leadership, the former failed. First, the 




I 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 527 

Speaker himself was removed from the all-powerful Committee on 
Rules, its membership was increased to ten, and the House itself was 
directed to choose the committee. This committee has the power to 
report to the House any rule which, when adopted by the House, 
controls its proceedings; and the Speaker's removal from the com- 
mittee which he had formerly controlled by his own casting vote, tended 
to transfer control in legislation to the House itself. Second, the 
Speaker was deprived of his power to appoint the regular committees 
of the House, and the House itself resumed this function. 

CHANGES IN GOVERNMENTAL PROCEDURE IN THE STATES 

The Populists, after their decided defeat in the presidential contest 
of 1896, accepted the result more gracefully than is usually the wont of 
worsted parties. Seeing the futihty of entering national popuUstic 
politics, they entered upon a successful career in the poli- legislation 
tics of the several states. The initiative and the referendum, ^^ ^ ^ ^ ^^* 
to which the Populists had committed themselves in the nineties, aim to 
secure a larger and more direct participation by the people in the affairs 
of government. The one is a device whereby a certain percentage of 
voters, differing in different states, may propose a law and with or with- 
out the consent of the state legislature, as the state law on the subject 
may direct, submit the same to the voters for approval; if approved by 
the requisite majority the measure becomes a part of the law of the state. 
By the referendum, a certain stipulated percentage of voters may de- 
mand that any bill passed by the state legislature be submitted to the 
voters of the state, and accepted or rejected as the popular vote may 
decide. 

In 1896 the Democrats and Populists in control of the legislature of 
South Dakota passed an amendment to the state constitution author- 
izing the initiative and referendum, which the people 
accepted. Utah took the same course the next year, o/^the^'^^^*^ 
Oregon in 1902, Montana in 1906, Oklahoma in 1907, and initiative 
eight more states in the next five years. To remove the referendum, 
objection to the system that the people are too busy and 
too ignorant to pass on intricate problems of legislation, Oregon has 
adopted a device whereby on all measures submitted to them for 
approval, the people are "educated" by an official pamphlet of argu- 
ments pro and con. At present sixteen states have the initiative and 
referendum in some form. 

The recall, by which is meant the power to remove a public official 
from office by popular vote at any time during his term, probably 
originated in the city charter of Los Angeles, California, in 1903. 



528 A WORLD POWER 

Seattle, Washington, adopted it in 1906, and it was made state- wide 
in Oregon in 1908. To-day hundreds oj municipalities 
make use of it, and it is a state provision in at least eight 
states. Such a weapon in politics lays on the officials a heavy sense 
of responsibility and holds before them a high standard of efficiency. 
In order to protect the public servants from persecution at the hands 
of their enemies, who might try to use the recall many times against 
certain officials till the recall should finally prove successful, Oregon 
made a rule that those who call for a second or a third recall election 
against the same ofiicial must pay the expenses of those elections. Ari- 
zona tried to come into the Union in 191 1 with a provision in her state 
constitution for the recall of judges. Acting upon a vehement message 
from President Taft, Congress voted to admit her on the condition that 
the provision be stricken out. Only by consenting did Arizona become 
a state; but immediately after statehood, she put the clause back into 
her constitution. The Progressives in their national platform of 191 2 
went farther, demanding not only the recall of judges but also the recall 
of judicial decisions. The more conservative, who believe that the 
impartiality of judges depends upon their independence of popular 
clamor, take the position of President Taft that the recall should not 
touch the bench or its decisions. 

Along with the movement for the initiative, referendum, and recall, 
has gone the corresponding demand of the people for greater partici- 
Direct pation in the management of political parties. The con- 

RTimanes. vention system of nomination, in vogue since the days of 
Andrew Jackson, has fallen more or less into disrepute, and the more 
democratic system of direct primaries is widely advocated. The 
convention, it is alleged, can be bought, controlled by a boss, and 
managed unfairly by the arbitrary control of the presiding officer, in the 
interests of a single candidate against the interests of other candidates. 
Experience has proved, too, that, surrounded by thousands of spectators, 
easily swept into excitement by appealing oratory, the little handful 
of delegates on the floor of a convention are not placed amid conditions 
suitable to the sober deliberation and judgment with which the can- 
didate for an important office should be chosen. From these abuses 
direct primaries are urged as a means of escape. In them the people, 
by casting ballots, as on election day, are able to make their own 
nominations without sending delegates of their power to a nominating 
convention. Wisconsin adopted direct primaries in 1903, Oregon in 
1904, Illinois in 1905, and many other states have since followed 
their example, some for nominations to state offices only, some for 
presidential nominations as well. 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 529 

Another movement for a sweeping reform, looking to the greater 
participation of the people in the affairs of government, gained ground 
first in the West, just as did the initiative, the referendum. Woman 
the recall, and the direct primary; this is the movement suffrage, 
for the political enfranchisement of women. Women in the United 
States already have civil rights; they are generally capable of owning 
property, entering into contracts, and engaging in gainful occupations, 
but in most states full political rights are denied them, though many 
states grant to them the privilege of voting on certain matters, such as 
proposed bond issues, school matters, and municipal affairs. In the 
territory of Wyoming in 1869 full enfranchisment was given to women 
under the same conditions as to men; and when that territory became a 
state in 1890 the same provision was placed in the state constitution. 
Colorado took the step in 1893, Idaho and Utah in 1896, and from 1910 
to 1914 the reform was adopted by Washington, California, Arizona, 
Kansas, Oregon, Nevada, Montana, and the territory of Alaska. In 
Illinois, the entering wedge of the reform east of the Mississippi, women 
enjoy presidential and municipal suffrage. These twelve states 
together cast 91 electoral votes out of a total electoral vote of 531. 
In four eastern states — New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and 
Pennsylvania, — the reform passed the legislature, but was rejected 
by the electorate in 191 5. 

An amendment to the Constitution of the United States to give 
suffrage to women the country over received a majority of votes in 
the United States Senate in 1914 but failed of the requis- jije question 
ite two-thirds vote; in January, 1915, a similar amend- of woman 
ment, proposed in the House of Representatives, failed of the iTa^tLnal 
a majority; but the friends of the movement derived en- Congress, 
couragement from the close vote, which showed that their cause had 
made great strides within the last decade. 

An innovation in the administration of municipal affairs, known 
as the commission form of government, originated in the West in the 
first years of the twentieth century and has spread rapidly xhe spread of 
over all sections, till at the present writing at least four ^^^ commis- 
hundred cities and towns have adopted it with modifica- municipal 
tions. Municipal government has become a subject of government, 
increasing importance as population has tended more and more to the 
large centers. In 1910 thirty-five per cent of the population of the 
United States lived in cities of 25,000 or more inhabitants. 

When Galveston, Texas, was destroyed by a tidal wave in 1900, the 
voters in desperation intrusted the confused affairs of the stricken city 
to a commission of five men. Inasmuch as these men were not re- 



S30 A WORLD POWER 

quired to give their whole time to the city's management, and could 
^j^g still attend to their own private afifairs, the commission- 

Gaiveston ers were secured from the best business talent of the city, 
p an. rpj^g experiment was an immediate success, and when the 

crisis was over, citizens were unwilling to go back to the old regime. 
Other cities, groaning under the corruption of their municipal adminib.- 
tration, seized upon the plan. Details differ in different cities, but 
the essential principle is the concentration of executive and legislative 
power and responsibility in the hands of a few men, who are con- 
stantly under public scrutiny, each at the head of a branch of city 
government, such as law, finance, park department, etc. Usually the 
mayor and the town council are dispensed with. 

Des Moines, Iowa, was among the first cities to follow Galveston's 
experiment, and its special type of commission government has been 

widely copied. By this plan the initiative, referendum, 
Molnes^Dian ^^^ recall are adopted along with the commission form of 
and the city government, and all important franchises awarding to 
San.^^*' private corporations municipal rights or powers must first 

be approved directly by the people. Direct primaries are 
in vogue for the nomination of officials, and every official represents 
the entire city instead of a single ward. The five commissioners are 
required to give all their time to the municipality, but this feature of 
the Des Moines plan has been subject to criticism on the ground that 
few cities are able to pay sufficiently high salaries to compensate com- 
missioners for abandoning their private business. In 1908 the city 
manager plan was evolved to meet this difficulty, and was promptly 
put into operation in Dayton and Springfield, Ohio. It aims to pro- 
vide for the management of the city strictly after the manner of an 
up-to-date business corporation. The commissioners under this plan 
are not required to devote all their time to the department of the city 
government over which each presides, but a non-partisan expert is 
hired to give all his time to the city, to have general control over the 
executive business of the city, to appoint the subordinate officials, deter- 
mine salaries, etc. At least seventeen cities now make use of this form 
of government, which is favored by the National Municipal League. 

GENERAL REFERENCES 

C. L. Jones, Readings on Parties and Elections; R. S. Childs, Short Ballot Princi- 
ples; A. H. Eaton, The Oregon Systetn, and The Story of Direct Legislation in Oregon; 
A. M. Kales, Unpopular Government in the United States; W. H. Taft, Popular Govern- 
ment; Roosevelt, New Nationalism. 



PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY 531 

SPECIAL TOPICS 

1. Immigration. Latan£, World Power, 285-303; P. Roberts, Immigration; A. 
S. BERNHEiiiER, Russian Jeic in the United Stales; E. A. Steiner, Trail of the Immi- 
grant; H. P. Fairchild, Immigration; J. W. Jenks and W. J. Lauck, Immigration 
Problem. 

2. The Movement for Direct Government. W. E. Weyle, Nrd< Democracy; 
A. Stickney, Organized Democracy; Beard and Shultz, Initiative, Referendum, and 

Recall; A. L. Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government; G. H. Haynes, Elec- 
tion of Senators; C. E. Merriam, Primary Elections; T. Roosevelt, The New 
Nationalism. 

3. The Laboring Classes. H. Marot, American Labor Unions; R. T. Ely, Labor 
Movement; J. R. Commons, Ed., Trade Unionism and Labor Problems; J. Mitchell, 
Organized Labor, and The Wage Earner and His Problems; H. W. L.aidler, Boycotts 
and the Labor Struggle; F. J. Warne, Coal Mine Workers. 

ILLUSTRATIVE MATERL\L 

B. T. Washington, Up From Slavery; Upton Sinclair, The Jungle; W. A. White, 
A Certain Rich Man; G. E. Woodberry, My Country; M. Antin, The Promised Land. 

SUGGESTIVE QUESTIONS 

Why has it been easy for immigrants to succeed in the United States? Account 
for the prosperity of the New South since 1865. Account for the rapid growth of the 
western cities at the present time. What were the benefits of the large aggregations 
of capital immediately after the Civil War? At the present time? What are their 
evils? What are the benefits and evils of labor unions? How do you account for 
the increase of direct popular government since 1896? Why is prosecution of the big 
trusts politically popular? Is the tariff as much a leading issue in politics at present as 
at any time in the history of the country? Why? Why is the policy of conservation 
of natural resources a historical necessity? Why is it difficult to enforce the civil service 
law when a new administration comes into power? 



APPENDIX I 

DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE 

In Congress, July 4, 1776, 

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States 

OF America, 

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people 
to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and 
to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to 
which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect 
to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which 
impel them to the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that 
they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that 
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure 
these rights. Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers 
from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government 
becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to 
abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such 
principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most 
likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate 
that Governments long established should not be changed for light and tran- 
sient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are 
more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves 
by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long 
train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces 
a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their 
duty, to throw ofif such Government, and to provide new Guards for their 
future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and 
such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems 
of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history 
of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establish- 
ment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be 
submitted to a candid world. 

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for 
the public good. 

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing 
importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be 
obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. 

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts 

533 



534 APPENDIX I 

of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in 
the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. 

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, 
and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose 
of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. 

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with 
manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. 

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to 
be elected; whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have 
returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the 
mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions 
within. 

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that 
purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to 
pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of 
new Appropriations of Lands. 

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to 
Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers. 

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their 
ofhces, and the amount and payment of their salaries. 

He has erected a multitude of New Ofhces, and sent hither swarms of 
Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance. 

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the 
Consent of our legislature. 

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the 
Civil Power. 

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our 
constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their 
acts of pretended legislation: 

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: 

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders 
which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: 

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: 

For imposing taxes on us without our Consent: 

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: 

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences: 

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, 
establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries 
so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the 
same absolute rule into these Colonies. 

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and 
altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments : 

For suspending our own Legislature, and declaring themselves invested 
with Power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. 

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection 
and waging War against us. 



APPENDIX I 



535 



He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and 
destroyed the Hves of our people. 

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to corn- 
pleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with cir- 
cumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous 
ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. 

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to 
bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends 
and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. 

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured 
to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, 
whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, 
sexes and conditions. 

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the 
most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by 
repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act 
which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People. 

Nor have We been wanting in attention to our British brethren. 'We have 
warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an 
unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circum- 
stances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their 
native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of 
our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably in- 
terrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to 
the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in 
the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the 
rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends. 

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in 
General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for 
the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good 
People, of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United 
Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they 
are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political 
connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be 
totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full 
Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, 
and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. 
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection 
of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes 
and our sacred Honor. 

JOHN HANCOCK.i 

1 The remaining signatures are omitted. 



APPENDIX II 

ARTICLES OF CONFEDERATION 

Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the States of New- 
hamshire, Massachusetts-bay, Rhodeisland and Providence Plantations, Con- 
necticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, 
North-Carolina, South-Carolina and Georgia. 

Article I. The stile of this confederacy shall be "The United States of 
America." 

Article II. Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom and independ- 
ence, and every power, jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confedera- 
tion expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled. 

Article III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of 
friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their 
liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist 
each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of 
them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever. 

Article IV. The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and 
intercourse among the people of the different States in this Union, the free 
inhabitants of each of these States, paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from 
justice excepted, shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citi- 
zens in the several States; and the people of each State shall have free ingress 
and regress to and from any other State, and shall enjoy therein all the privi- 
leges of trade and commerce, subject to the same duties, impositions and 
restrictions as the inhabitants thereof respectively, provided that such restric- 
tions shall not extend so far as to prevent the removal of property imported 
into any State, to any other state of which the owner is an inhabitant; pro- 
vided also that no imposition, duties or restriction shall be laid by any State, 
on the property of the United States, or either of them. 

If any Person guilty of, or charged with treason, felony, or other high mis- 
demeanor in any State, shall flee from justice, and be found in any of the 
United States, he shall upon demand of the Governor or Executive power, 
of the State from which he fled, be delivered up and removed to the State 
having jurisdiction of his olTence. 

Full faith and credit shall be given in each of these States to the records, 
acts and judicial proceedings of the courts and magistrates of every other 
State. 

Article V. For the more convenient management of the general interest 
of the United States, delegates shall be annuafly appointed in such manner 
as the legislature of each State shaU direct, to meet in Congress on the first 

536 



APPENDIX II 



537 



Monday in November, in every year, with a power reserved to each State, to 
recall its delegates, or any of them, at any time within the year, and to send 
others in their stead, for the remainder of the year. 

No State shall be represented in Congress by less than two, nor by more 
than seven members; and no person shall be capable of being a delegate for 
more than three years in any term of six years; nor shall any person, being a 
delegate, be capable of holding any office under the United States, for which he, 
or another for his benefit receives any salary, fees or emolument of any kind. 

Each State shall maintain its own delegates m a meeting of the States, and 
while they act as members of the committee of the States. 

In determining questions in the United States, in Congress assembled, 
each State shall have one vote. 

Freedom of speech and debate in Congress shall not be impeached or ques- 
tioned in any court, or place out of Congress, and the members of Congress 
shall be protected in their persons from arrests and imprisonments, during the 
time of their going to and from, and attendance on Congress, except for treason, 
felony, or breach of the peace. 

Article VI. No State without the consent of the United States in Con- 
gress assembled, shall send any embassy to, or receive any embassy from, or 
enter into any conference, agreement, alliance or treaty with any king, prince 
or state; nor shall any person holding any office of profit or trust under the 
United States, or any of them, accept of any present, emolument, office or 
title or any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign state; nor shall 
the United States in Congress assembled, or any of them, grant any title of 
nobility. 

No two or more States shall enter into any treaty, confederation or alliance 
whatever between them, without the consent of the United States in Congress 
assembled, specifying accurately the purposes for which the same is to be 
entered into, and how long it shall continue. 

No State shall lay any imposts or duties, which may interfere with any 
stipulations in treaties, entered into by the United States in Congress as- 
sembled, with any king, prince or state, in pursuance of any treaties already 
proposed by Congress, to the courts of France and Spain. 

No vessels of war shall be kept up in time of peace by any State, except 
such number only, as shall be deemed necessary by the United States in Con- 
gress assembled, for the defence of such State, or its trade; nor shall any body 
of forces be kept up by any State, in time of peace, except such number only, 
as in the judgment of the United States, in Congress assembled, shall be deemed 
requisite to garrison the forts necessary for the defence of such State; but 
every State shall always keep up a well regulated and disciplined militia, suffi- 
ciently armed and accoutered, and shall provide and constantly have ready for 
use, in public stores, a due number of field pieces and tents, and a proper 
quantity of arms, ammunition and camp equipage. 

No State shall engage in any war without the consent of the Unfted States 
in Congress assembled, unless such State be actually invaded by enemies, or 
shall have received certain advice of a resolution being formed by some nation 



538 APPENDIX II 

of Indians to invade such State, and the danger is so imminent as not to ad- 
mit of a delay, till the United States in Congress assembled can be consulted: 
nor shall any State grant commissions to any ships or vessels of war, nor letters 
of marque or reprisal, except it be after a declaration of war by the United 
States in Congress assembled, and then only against the kingdom or state and 
the subjects thereof, against which war has been so declared, and under such 
regulations as shall be established by the United States in Congress assembled, 
unless such State be infested by pirates, in which case vessels of war may be 
fitted out for that occasion, and kept so long as the danger shall continue, or 
until the United States in Congress assembled shall determine otherwise. 

Article VII. When land-forces are raised by any State for the common 
defence, all officers of or under the rank of colonel, shall be appointed by the 
Legislature of each State respectively by whom such forces shall be raised, or 
in such manner as such State shall direct, and all vacancies shall be filled up by 
the State which first made the appointment. 

Article VIII. All charges of war, and all other expenses that shall be 
incurred for the common defence or general welfare, and allowed by the United 
States in Congress assembled, shall be defrayed out of a common treasury, 
which shall be supplied by the several States, in proportion to the value of all 
land within each State, granted to or surveyed for any person, as such land and 
the buildings and improvements thereon shall be estimated according to such 
mode as the United States in Congress assembled, shall from time to time 
direct and appoint. 

The taxes for paying that proportion shall be laid and levied by the author- 
ity and direction of the Legislatures of the several States within the time agreed 
upon by the United States in Congress assembled. 

Article IX. The United States in Congress assembled, shall have the 
sole and exclusive right and power of determining on peace and war, except in 
the cases mentioned in the sixth article — of sending and receiving ambassadors 
— entering into treaties and alliances, provided that no treaty of commerce 
shall be made whereby the legislative power of the respective States shall be 
restrained from imposing such imposts and duties on foreigners, as their own 
people are subjected to, or from prohibiting the exportation or importation of 
any species of goods or commodities whatsoever • — of establishing rules for 
deciding in all cases, what captures on land or water shall be legal, and in what 
manner prizes taken by land or naval forces in the service of the United States 
shall be divided or appropriated — of granting letters of marque and reprisal 
in times of peace — appointing courts for the trial of piracies and felonies 
committed on the high seas and establishing courts for receiving and deter- 
mining finally appeals in all cases of captures, provided that no member of 
Congress shall be appointed a judge of any of the said courts. 

The United States in Congress assembled shall also be the last resort on 
appeal in all disputes and differences now subsisting or that hereafter may 
arise betwten two or more States concerning boundary, jurisdiction or any 
other cause whatever; which authority shall always be exercised in the man- 
ner following. Whenever the legislative or executive authority or lawful 



APPENDIX II 



539 



agent of any State in controversy with another shall present a petition to 
Congress, stating the matter in question and praying for a hearing, notice 
thereof shall be given by order of Congress to the legislative or executive 
authority of the other State in controversy, and a day assigned for the ap- 
pearance of the parties by their lawful agents, who shall then be directed to 
appoint by joint consent, commissioners or judges to constitute a court for 
hearing and determining the matter in question: but if they cannot agree, 
Congress shall name three persons out of each of the United States, and from 
the list of such persons each party shall alternately strike out one, the peti- 
tioners beginning, until the number shall be reduced to thirteen; and from 
that number not less than seven, nor more than nine names as Congress shall 
direct, shall in the presence of Congress be drawn out by lot, and the persons 
whose names shall be so drawn or any five of them, shall be commissioners 
or judges, to hear and finally determine the controversy, so always as a major 
part of the judges who shall hear the cause shall agree in the determination: 
and if either party shall neglect to attend at the day appointed, without 
showing reasons, which Congress shall judge sufficient, or being present shall 
refuse to strike, the Congress shall proceed to nominate three persons out of 
each State, and the Secretary of Congress shall strike in behalf of such party 
absent or refusing; and the judgment and sentence of the court to be ap- 
pointed, in the manner before prescribed, shall be final and conclusive; and 
if any of the parties shall refuse to submit to the authority of such court, or 
to appear or defend their claim or cause, the court shall nevertheless proceed 
to pronounce sentence, or judgment, which shall in like manner be final and 
decisive, the judgment or sentence and other proceedings being in either case 
transmitted to Congress, and lodged among the acts of Congress for the se- 
curity of the parties concerned: provided that every commissioner, before he 
sits in judgment, shall take an oath to be administered by one of the judges of 
the supreme or superior court of the State, where the cause shall be tried, 
" well and truly to hear and determine the matter in question, according to 
the best of his judgment, without favour, affection or hope of reward:" pro- 
vided also that no State shall be deprived of territory for the benefit of the 
United States. 

All controversies concerning the private right of soil claimed under dif- 
ferent grants of two or more States, whose jurisdiction as they may respect 
such lands, and the States which passed such grants are adjusted, the said 
grants or either of them being at the same time claimed to have originated 
antecedent to such settlement of jurisdiction, shall on the petition of either 
party to the Congress of the United States, be finally determined as near as 
may be in the same manner as is before prescribed for deciding disputes re- 
specting territorial jurisdiction between different States. 

The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and 
exclusive right and power of regulating the alloy and value of coin struck by 
their own authority, or by that of the respective States — fixing the standard 
of weights and measures throughout the United States — regulating the trade 
and managing all affairs with the Indians, not members of any of the States, 



540 APPENDIX II 

provided that the legislative right of any State within its own limits be not 
infringed or violated — establishing and regulating post-offices from one State 
to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the 
papers passing thro' the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of 
the said office — appointing all officers of the land forces, in the service of the 
United States, excepting regimental officers — appointing all the officers of the 
naval forces, and commissioning all officers whatever in the service of the United 
States — making rules for the government and regulation of the said land and 
naval forces, and directing their operations. 

The United States in Congress assembled shall have authority to appoint 
a committee, to sit in the recess of Congress, to be denominated "a Committee 
of the States," and to consist of one delegate from each State; and to appoint 
such other committees and civil officers as may be necessary for manageing' 
the general affairs of the United States under their direction — to appoint one; 
of their number to preside, provided that no person be allowed to serve in th«> 
office of president more than one year in any term of three years; to ascertain 
the necessary sums of money to be raised for the service of the United StateS; 
and to appropriate and apply the same for defraying the public expenses — ■ 
to borrow money, or emit bills on the credit of the United States, transmittinf 
every half year to the respective States an account of the sums of money sC 
borrowed or emitted, ■ — to build and equip a navy — to agree upon the number 
of land forces, and to make requisitions from each State for its quota, in pro- 
portion to the number of white inhabitants in such State; which requisitior 
shall be binding, and thereupon the Legislature of each State shall appoint the 
regimental officers, raise the men and cloath, arm and equip them in a soldier 
like manner, at the expense of the United States; and the officers and men so 
cloathed, armed and equipped shall march to the place appointed, and within 
the time agreed on by the United States in Congress assembled: but if the 
United States in Congress assembled shall, on consideration of circumstance? 
judge proper that any State should not raise men, or should raise a smallei 
number than its quota, and that any other State should raise a greater number 
of men than the quota thereof, such extra number shall be raised, officered, 
cloathed, armed and equipped in the same manner as the quota of such State, 
unless the legislature of such State shall judge that such extra number cannot 
be safely spared out of the same, in which case they shall raise, officer, cloath, 
arm and equip as many of such extra number as they judge can be safely spared. 
And the officers and men so cloathed, armed and equipped, shall march to 
the place appointed, and within the time agreed on by the United States in 
Congress assembled. 

The United States in Congress assembled shall never engage in a war, nor 
grant letters of marque and reprisal in time of peace, nor enter into any treaties 
or alHances, nor coin money, nor regulate the value thereof, nor ascertain the 
sums and expenses necessary for the defence and welfare of the United States, 
or any of them, nor emit bills, nor borrow money on the credit of the United 
States, nor appropriate money, nor agree upon the number of vessels of war, 
to be built or purchased, or the number of land or sea forces to be raised, nor 



APPENDIX II 



541 



appoint a commander in chief of the army or navy, unless nine States assent 
to the same: nor shall a question on any other point, except for adjourning 
from day to day be determined, unless by the votes of a majority of the United 
States in Congress assembled. 

The Congress of the United States shall have power to adjourn to any 
time within the year, and to any place within the United States, so that no 
period of adjournment be for a longer duration than the space of six months, 
and shall publish the journal of their proceedings monthly, except such parts 
thereof relating to treaties, alHances or military operations, as in their judgment 
require secresy; and the yeas and nays of the delegates of each State on. any 
question shall be entered on the journal, when it is desired by any delegate; 
and the delegates of a State, or any of them, at his or their request shall be 
furnished with a transcript of the said journal, except such parts as are above 
excepted, to lay before the Legislatures of the several States. 

Article X. The committee of the States, or any nine of them, shall be 
authorized to execute, in the recess of Congress, such of the powers of Congress 
as the United States in Congress assembled, by the consent of nine States, 
shall from time to time think expedient to vest them with; provided that no 
power be delegated to the said committee, for the exercise of which, by the 
articles of confederation, the voice of nine States in the Congress of the United 
States assembled is requisite. 

Article XL Canada acceding to this confederation, and joining in the 
measures of the United States, shall be admitted into, and entitled to all the 
advantages of this Union: but no other colony shall be admitted into the same, 
unless such admission be agreed to by nine States. 

Article XII. All bills of credit emitted, monies borrowed and debts 
contracted by, or under the authority of Congress, before the assembhng of 
the United States, in pursuance of the present confederation, shall be deemed 
and considered as a charge against the United States, for payment and satis- 
faction whereof the said United States, and the public faith are hereby solemnly 
pledged. 

Article XIII. Every State shall abide by the determinations of the 
United States in Congress assembled, on all questions which by this confed- 
eration are submitted to them. And the articles of this confederation shall be 
inviolably observed by every State, and the Union shall be perpetual; nor 
shall any alteration at any time hereafter be made in any of them; unless 
such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be after- 
wards confirmed by the Legislatures of every State. 

And whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline 
the hearts of the Legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve 
of, and to authorize us to ratify the said articles of confederation and perpetual 
union. Know ye that we the undersigned delegates, by virtue of the power 
and authority to us given for that purpose, do by these presents, in the name 
and in behalf of our respective constituents, fully and entirely ratify and con- 
firm each and every of the said articles of confederation and perpetual union, 
and all and singular the matters and things therein contained: and we do further 



542 APPENDIX II 

solemnly plight and engage the faith of our respective constituents, that they 
shall abide by the determinations of the United States in Congress assembled, on 
all questions, which by the said confederation are submitted to them. And 
that the articles thereof shall be inviolably observed by the States we respec- 
tively represent, and that the Union shall be perpetual. 

In witness whereof we have hereunto set our hands in Congress. Done 
at Philadelphia in the State of Pennsylvania the ninth day of July in the year 
of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight, and in the third 
year of the independence of America.^ 

1 The names of the signers are omitted. 



APPENDIX III 

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, 
establish Justice, insure domestic TranquiHty, provide for the common 
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty 
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution 
for the United States of America. 

Article I. 
Section, i. 
I . All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the 
United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. 

Section. 2. 

1. The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen 
every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in 
each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most 
numerous Branch of the State Legislature. 

2. No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the 
Age of twenty-five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, 
and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he 
shall be chosen. 

3. Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the 
several States which may be included within this Union, according to their 
respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number 
of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and 
excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual 
Enumeration shaU be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the 
Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, 
in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives 
shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at 
Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the 
State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, 
Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York 
six. New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Vir- 
ginia ten. North Carolina five. South Carolina five, and Georgia three. 

4. When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the 
Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies. 

5. The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other 
Officers; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment. 

543 



544 APPENDIX III 

Section. 3. 

1. The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators 
from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years; and each 
Senator shall have one \'ote. 

2. Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first 
Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The 
Seats of the Serxators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the 
second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the 
third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen 
every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, 
during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may 
make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, 
which shall then fill such Vacancies. 

3. No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age 
of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who 
shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be 
chosen. 

4. The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, 
but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided. 

5. The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro 
tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the 
Office of President of the United States. 

6. The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When 
sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the 
President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And 
no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the 
Members present. 

7. Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to 
removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, 
Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall never- 
theless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, 
according to Law. 

Section. 4. 

1. The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and 
Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; 
but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, 
except as to the Places of chusing Senators. 

2. The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such 
Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law 
appoint a different Day. 

Section. 5. 

I. Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifi- 
cations of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum 
to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may 



APPENDIX III 545 

be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, 
and under such Penalties as each House may provide. 

2. Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its 
Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, 
expel a Member. 

3. Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to 
time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require 
Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any 
question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the 
Journal. 

4. Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the 
Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place 
than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting. 

Section. 6. 

1. The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for 
their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the 
United States. They shall in aU Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach 
of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session 
of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and 
for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any 
other Place. 

2. No Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was 
elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United 
States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have 
been encreased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the 
United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in 
Office. 

Section. 7. 

1. All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representa- 
tives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other 
Bills. 

2. Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and 
the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the 
United States; If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with 
his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter 
the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If 
after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, 
it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which 
it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, 
it shall become a Law. But in aU such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall 
be determined by Yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for 
and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. 
If any BiU shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays 
excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a law, 



546 APPENDIX III 

in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment 
prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law. 

3. Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate 
and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of 
Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and 
before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disap- 
proved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of 
Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case 
of a bill. 

Section. 8. 

The Congress shall have Power 

1. To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts 
and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; 
but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United 
States; 

2. To borrow Money on the Credit of the United States; 

3. To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several 
States, and with the Indian Tribes; 

4. To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on 
the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States; 

5. To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and 
fix the Standard of Weights and Measures; 

6. To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and 
current Coin of the United States; 

7. To establish Post Offices and post Roads; 

8. To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for 
limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective 
Writings and Discoveries; 

9. To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court ; 

10. To define and Punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high 
Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations; 

11. To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make 
Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; 

12. To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that 
Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years; 

13. To provide and maintain a Navy; 

14. To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and 
naval Forces; 

15. To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the 
Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; 

16. To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and 
for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the LTnited 
States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, 
and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed 
by Congress; 

17. To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such 



APPENDIX III 



547 



District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular 
States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government 
of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased 
by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for 
the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock- Yards, and other needful 
Buildings; — And 

1 8. To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying 
into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this 
Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department 
or Officer thereof. 

Section. 9. 

1. The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now 
existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior 
to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or Duty may be 
imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person. 

2. The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, 
unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. 

3. No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed. 

4. No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion 
to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken. 

5. No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State. 

6. No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Rev- 
enue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound 
to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another. 

7. No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of 
Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the 
Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time 
to time. 

8. No Title of Nobihty shall be granted by the United States: And no 
Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the 
Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, 
of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State. 

Section. 10. 

1. No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant 
Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit ; make any 
Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill 
of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, 
or grant any Title of Nobility. 

2. No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts 
or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for 
executing it's inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, 
laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury 
of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and 
Controul of the Congress. 



548 APPENDIX III 

3. No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of 
Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agree- 
ment or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in 
War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit 
of Delay. 

Article II. 

Section, i. 

1 . The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of 
America. He shall hold his Ofhce during the Term of four Years, and, together 
with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows 

2. Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof 
may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and 
Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no 
Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under 
the United States, shall be appointed an Elector. 

3. The electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by ballot 
for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same 
State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted 
for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and cer- 
tify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, 
directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, 
in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the 
Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the 
greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority 
of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one 
who have such Majority and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House 
of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for Presi- 
dent; and if no person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List 
the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the 
President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each 
State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a IVIember 
or Members from two-thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States 
shall be necessarj^ to a Choice. ■ In every Case, after the Choice of the Presi- 
dent, the person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be 
the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal 
Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice-President.^ 

4. The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the 
Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same through- 
out the United States. 

5. No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United 
States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the 
Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who 
shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years 
a Resident within the United States. 

1 This paragraph was superseded by the 12th Article of the Amendments. 



APPENDIX III 549 

6. In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, 
Resignation, or Inabihty to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, 
the same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law 
provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation, or Inability, both of 
the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as Pres- 
ident, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, 
or a President shall be elected. 

7. The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Com- 
pensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period 
for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period 
any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them. 

8. Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the follow- 
ing Oath or Affirmation: — "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faith- 
" fully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the 
"best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the 
"United States." 

Section. 2. 

1. The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy 
of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into 
the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, 
of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Sub- 
ject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power 
to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences. against the United States, except 
in Cases of Impeachment. 

2. He shall have Power, by and mth the Advice and Consent of the Senate, 
to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he 
shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall 
appoint Ambassadors, other public INIinisters and Consuls, Judges of the 
supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments 
are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: 
but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, 
as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the 
Heads of Departments. ' 

3. The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen 
during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at 
the End of their next Session. 

Section. 3. 

I. He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the 
State of the U^nion, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as 
he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may. on extraordinary Occasions, 
convene both Houses, or either of them, .and in Case of Disagreement between 
them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such 
Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public 
Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall 
Commission all the Officers of the United States. 



550 APPENDIX III 

Section. 4. 

I. The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, 
shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, 
Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. 

Article III. 
Section, i. 

I. The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme 
Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain 
and estabhsh. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall 
hold their Offices during good Behavior, and shall, at stated Times, receive 
for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their 
Continuance in Office. 

Section. 2. 

1. The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising 
under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or 
which shall be made, under their Authority; — to all Cases affecting Ambassa- 
dors, other public Ministers and Consuls; — to all Cases of admiralty and mari- 
time Jurisdiction; — to Controversies to which the United States shall be a 
Party; — to Controversies between two or more States; — between a State 
and Citizens of another State; — between Citizens of different States, — be- 
tween Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different 
States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Cit- 
izens or Subjects. 

2. In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, 
and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original 
Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court 
shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Excep- 
tions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make. 

3. The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by 
Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall 
have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial 
shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed. 

Section. 3. 

1. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levjang War 
against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. 
No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Wit- 
nesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. 

2. The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, 
but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture 
except during the Life of the Person attainted. 



APPENDIX III 551 

Article IV. 

Section, i. 

I. Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, 
Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress 
may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and 
Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof. 

Section. 2. 

1. The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immu- 
nities of Citizens in the several States. 

2. A person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, 
who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand 
of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up to 
be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime. 

3. No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws there- 
of, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation 
therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up 
on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due. 

Section. 3. 

1. New States may be admitted by the Congress into this L^nion; but no 
new State shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; 
nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of 
States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as 
well as of the Congress. 

2. The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful 
Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging 
to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as 
to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State. 

Section. 4. 

I. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Repub- 
lican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; 
and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature 
cannot be convened) against domestic Violence. 

Article V. 

I. The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it neces- 
sary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application 
of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for 
proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents 
and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures 
of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, 
as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; 



552 APPENDIX III 

Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thou- 
sand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth 
Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without 
its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate. 

Article VI. 

1. All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adop- 
tion of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this 
Constitution, as under the Confederation. 

2. This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be 
made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, 
under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the 
Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in 
the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding. 

3. The Senators and Representatives before rftentioned, and the Members 
of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both 
of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or 
Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever 
be required as a Qualification to any Office or pubhc Trust under the United 
States. 

Article VII. 

I. The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient 
for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying 
the Same. 

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the 
Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand 
seven' hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United 
States of America the Twelfth. In Witness whereof We have hereunto 
subscribed our Names, 

G? WASHINGTON — 

Presidt, and Deputy from Virginia ^ 



ARTICLES IN ADDITION TO, AND AMENDMENT OF, 
THE CONSTITUTION. 

Article I. 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or 
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or 
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition 
the Government for a redress of grievances. 

^ The remaining signatures are omitted. 



APPENDIX III 553 

Article II. 

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, 
the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. 

Article III. 

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the 
consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by 
law. 

Article IV. 

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and 
effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and 
no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affir- 
mation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons 
or things to be seized. 

Article V. 

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous 
crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases 
arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service 
in time of War or in public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the 
same offence to be twice put in jeopard)^ of life or limb; nor shall be compelled 
in any Criminal Case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, 
liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property 
be taken for pubHc use, without just compensation. 

Article VI. 

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy 
and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime 
shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascer- 
tained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; 
to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process 
for obtaining Witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel 
for his defence. 

Article VII. 

In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty 
dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury 
shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than accord- 
ing to the rules of the common law. 

Article VIII. 

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel 
and unusual punishments inflicted. 



554 APPENDIX III 

Article IX. 

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be con- 
strued to deny or disparage others retained by the people. 

Article X. 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor 
prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the 
people.^ 

Article XL 

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend 
to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the 
United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any 
Foreign State.^ 

Article XII. 

The Electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for 
President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant 
of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person 
voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice- 
President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as Presi- 
dent, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of 
votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to 
the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of 
the Senate; — The President of the Senate shall, in presence of the Senate and 
House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be 
counted; — The person having the greatest nurnber of votes for President, 
shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of 
Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons 
having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for 
as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, 
the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by 
states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this 
purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, 
and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the 
House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of 
choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, 
then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in the case of the death or 
other constitutional disability of the President. The person having the greatest 
number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number 
be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person 
have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate 
shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of 
two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole 

^ The first ten amendments went into effect Nov. 3, 1791. 
2 In effect Jan. 8, 1798. 



APPENDIX III 



555 



number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineh- 
gible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the 
United States.^ 

Article XIII. 
Section, i 
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime 
whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United 
States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 

Section. 2. 
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate leg- 
islation. - 

Article XIV. 

Section, i. 
All persons born or naturahzed in the United States, and subject to the 
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein 
they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State 
deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; 
nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. 

Section. 2. 
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according 
to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each. 
State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election 
for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, 
Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, 
or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male in- 
habitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the 
United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, 
or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the pro- 
portion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole 
number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. 

Section. 3. 
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of 
President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the 
United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as 
a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member 
of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to 
support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insur- 
rection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies 
thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove 
such disability. 

1 In effect Sept. 25, 1804. - In effect December 18, 1865. 



5S6 APPENDIX III 

Section. 4. 
The validity of the pubhc debt of the United States, authorized by law, 
including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services 
in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither 
the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation 
incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any 
claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations 
and claims shall be held illegal and void. 

Section. 5. 
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the 
provisions of this article.^ 

Article XV. 
Section, i. 
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or 
abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or 
previous condition of servitude. 

Section. 2. 
The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate 
legislation.^ 

Article XVI. 
Section, i. 
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from 
whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, 
and without regard to any census or enumeration.' 

Article XVII. 

Section, i. 

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from 

each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator 

shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications 

requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislatures. 

Section. 2. 
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, 
the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such 
vacancies: Provided, That the Legislature of any State may empower the 
executive thereof to make temporary appointment until the people fill the 
vacancies by election as the Legislature may direct. 

Section. 3. 
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term 
of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.'* 

' In effect July 28, 1868. ' In effect February 25, 1913. 

2 In efJect March 30, 1870. ^ In effect May 31, 1913. 



APPENDIX IV 
ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT WILSON 

Delivered at a Joint Session of the Two Houses of Congress April 2, igij 

Gentlemen of the Congress: 

I HAVE called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are 
serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, 
which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should 
assume the responsibility of making. 

On the 3d of February last I officially laid before you the extraordinary 
announcement of the Imperial German Government that on and after the 
first day of February it was its purpose to put aside all restraints of law or of 
humanity and use its submarines to sink every vessel that sought to approach 
either the ports of Great Britain and Ireland or the western coasts of Europe 
or any of the ports controlled by the enemies of Germany within the Medi- 
terranean. That had seemed to be the object of the German submarine war- 
fare earlier in the war, but since April of last year the Imperial Government 
had somewhat restrained the commanders of its undersea craft in conformity 
with its promise then given to us that passenger boats should not be sunk and 
that due warning would be given to all other vessels which its submarines 
might seek to destroy, when no resistance was offered or escape attempted, 
and care taken that their crews were given at least a fair chance to save their 
lives in their open boats. The precautions taken were meagre and haphazard 
enough, as was proved in distressing instance after instance in the progress of 
the cruel and unmanly business, but a certain degree of restraint was observed. 
The new policy has swept every restriction aside. Vessels of every kind, what- 
ever their flag, their character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, 
have been ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought 
of help or mercy for those on board, the vessels of friendly neutrals along with 
those of belligerents. Even hospital ships and ships carrying relief to the 
sorely bereaved and stricken people of Belgium, though the latter were pro- 
vided with safe conduct through the proscribed areas by the German Govern- 
ment itself and were distinguished by unmistakable marks of identity, have 
been sunk with the same reckless lack of compassion or of principle. 

I was for a little while unable to believe that such things would in fact be 
done by any government that had hitherto subscribed to the humane practices 
of civilized nations. International law had its origin in the attempt to set 
up some law which would be respected and observed upon the seas, where no 
nation had right of dominion and where lay the free highways of the world. 
By painful stage after stage has that law been built up, with meagre enough 

557 



558 APPENDIX IV 

results, indeed, after all was accomplished that could be accomplished, but 
always with a clear view, at least, of what the heart and conscience of mankind 
demanded. This minimum of right the German Government had swept aside 
under the plea of retaliation and necessity and because it had no weapons which 
it could use at sea except these which it is impossible to employ as it is employ- 
ing them without throwing to the winds all scruples of humanity or of respect 
for the understandings that were supposed to underlie the intercourse of the 
world. I am not now thinking of the loss of property involved, immense and 
serious as that is, but only of the wanton and wholesale destruction of the lives 
of noncombatants, men, women, and children, engaged in pursuits which have 
always, even in the darkest periods of modern history, been deemed innocent 
and legitimate. Property can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent 
people cannot be. The present German submarine warfare against commerce 
is a warfare against mankind. 

It is a war against aU nations. American ships have been sunk, American 
lives taken, in ways which it has stirred us very deeply to learn of, but the ships 
and people of other neutral and friendly nations have been sunk and over- 
whelmed in the waters in the same way. There has been no discrimination. 
The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it 
will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a modera- 
tion of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and 
our motives as a nation. We must put excited feeling away. Our motive wiU 
not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, 
but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single 
champion. 

When I addressed the Congress on the 26th of February last I thought that 
it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas 
against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful 
violence. But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because 
submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have 
been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against 
their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would 
defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase 
upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim 
necessity indeed, to endeavor to destroy them before they have shown their 
own intention. They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. 
The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within 
the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defense of rights which 
no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend. The 
intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our 
merchant ships wUl be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be 
dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at 
best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than 
ineffectual: it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is 
practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the 
effectiveness of belligerents. There is one choice we cannot make, we are 



APPENDIX IV 559 

incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer 
the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. 
The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; 
they cut to the very roots of human life. 

With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step 
I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in un- 
hesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the 
Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be 
in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United 
States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been 
thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country 
in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ 
all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and 
end the war. 

What this will involve is clear. It will involve the utmost practicable 
cooperation in counsel and action with the governments now at war with Ger- 
many, and, as incident to that, the extension to those governments of the most 
liberal financial credits, in order that our resources may so far as possible be 
added to theirs. It will involve the organization and mobilization of all the 
material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the 
incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most econom- 
ical and efficient way possible. It will involve the immediate full equipment 
of the navy in all respects but particularly in supplying it with the best means 
of dealing with the enemy's submarines. It will involve the immediate addi- 
tion to the armed forces of the United States already provided for by law in 
case of war of at least 500,000 men, who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon 
the principle of universal liability to service, and also the authorization of sub- 
sequent additional increments of equal force so soon as they may be needed 
and can be handled in training. It will involve also, of course, the granting 
of adequate credits to the Government, sustained, I hope, so far as they can 
equitably be sustained by the present generation, by well conceived taxation. 

I say sustained so far as may be equitable by taxation because it seems to 
me that it would be most unwise to base the credits which will now be necessary 
entirely on money borrowed. It is our duty, I most respectfully urge, to 
protect our people so far as we may against the very serious hardships and 
evils which would be likely to arise out of the inflation which would be pro- 
duced by vast loans. 

In carrying out the measures by which these things are to be accomplished 
we should keep constantly in mind the wisdom of interfering as little as pos- 
sible in our own preparation and in the equipment of our own military forces 
with the duty — for it wUl be a very practical duty — of supplying the nations 
already at war with Germany with the materials which they can obtain only 
from us or by our assistance. They are in the field and we should help them 
in every way to be effective there. 

I shall take the liberty of suggesting through the several executive depart- 
ments of the Government, for the consideration of your committees, measures 



56o APPENDIX IV 

for the accomplishment of the several objects I have mentioned. I hope that 
it will be your pleasure to deal with them as having been framed after very- 
careful thought by the branch of the Government upon which the responsi- 
bility of conducting the war and safeguarding the nation will most directly fall. 

While we do these things, these deeply momentous things, let us be very 
clear, and make very clear to all the world what our motives and our objects 
are. My own thought has not been driven from its habitual and normal course 
by the unhappy events of the last two months, and I do not believe that the 
thought of the nation has been altered or clouded by them. I have exactly 
the same things in mind now that I had in mind when I addressed the Senate 
on the 2 2d of January last; the same that I had in mind when I addressed the 
Congress on the 3d of February and on the 26th of February. Our object 
now, as then, is to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the 
world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up among the really 
free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of 
action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles. Neutrality 
is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and 
the freedom of its peoples, and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in 
the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is 
controlled wholly by their wiU, not by the wUl of their people. We have seen 
the last of neutrality in such circumstances. We are at the beginning of an 
age in which it wiU be insisted that the same standards of conduct and of 
responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their 
governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized States. 

We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling tow-ard 
them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse 
that their Government acted in entering this war. It was not with their pre- 
vious knowledge or approval. It was a war determined upon as wars used to 
be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when peoples were nowhere 
consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest 
of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to 
use their fellow men as pawns and tools. Self-governed nations do not fill 
their neighbor States with spies or set the course of intrigue to bring about 
some critical posture of affairs which will give them an opportunity to strike 
and make conquest. Such designs can be successfully worked out only under 
cover and where no one has the right to ask questions. Cunningly contrived 
plans of deception or aggression, carried, it may be, from generation to genera- 
tion, can be worked out and kept from the light only within the privacy of 
courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged 
class. They are happily impossible where public opinion commands and 
insists upon full information concerning all the nation's affairs. 

A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partner- 
ship of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to 
keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honor, 
a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings 
of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one 



APPENDIX IV 561 

would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold 
their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer the interests 
of mankind to any narrow interest of their own. 

Does not every American feel that assurance has been added to our hope 
for the future peace of the world by the wonderful and heartening things that 
have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia? Russia was known 
by those who knew it best to have been always in fact democratic at heart, 
in all the vital habits of her thought, in all the intimate relationships of her 
people that spoke their natural instinct, their habitual attitude toward life. 
The autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure, long as it 
had stood and terrible as was the reality of its power, was not in fact Russian 
in origin, character, or purpose; and now it has been shaken off and the great, 
generous Russian people have been added, in all their naive majesty and might, 
to the forces that are fighting for freedom in the world, for justice, and for 
peace. Here is a fit partner for a League of Honor. 

One of the things that has served to convince us that the Prussian autoc- 
racy was not and could never be our friend is that from the very outset of the 
present war it has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our offices 
of government with spies and set criminal intrigues everywhere afoot against 
our national unity of counsel, our peace within and without, our industries 
and our commerce. Indeed it is now evident that its spies were here even 
before the war began; and it is unhappily not a matter of conjecture, but a 
fact proved in our courts of justice, that the intrigues which have more than 
once come perilously near to disturbing the peace and dislocating the in- 
dustries of the country have been carried on at the instigation, with the 
support, and even under the personal direction of official agents of the Im- 
perial Government accredited to the Government of the United States. Even 
in checking these things and trying to extirpate them we have sought to put 
the most generous interpretation possible upon them because we knew that 
their source lay, not in any hostile feeling or purpose of the German people 
toward us (who were, no doubt as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), 
but only in the selfish designs of a government that did what it pleased and 
told its people nothing. But they have played their part in serving to con- 
vince us at last that that Government entertains no real friendship for us, 
and means to act against our peace and security at its convenience. That it 
means to stir up enemies against us at our very doors the intercepted note to 
the German Minister at Mexico City is eloquent evidence. 

We are accepting this challenge of hostile purpose because we know that in 
such a government, following such methods, we can never have a friend; and 
that in the presence of its organized power, always lying in wait to accomplish 
we know not what purpose, there can be no assured security for the demo- 
cratic governments of the world. We are now about to accept gauge of battle 
with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of 
the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power. We are glad, 
now that we see the facts with no veil of false pretense about them, to fight 
thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, 



562 APPENDIX IV 

the German peoples included : for the rights of nations great and small and the 
privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. 
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon 
the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. 
We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, 
no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but 
one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when 
those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations 
can make them. 

Just because we fight without rancor and without selfish object, seeking 
nothing for ourselves but what we shall wish to share with all free peoples, we 
shall, I feel confident, conduct our operations as belligerents without passion 
and ourselves observe with proud punctilio the principles of right and of fair 
play we profess to be fighting for. 

I have said nothing of the governments allied with the Imperial Govern- 
ment of Germany because they have not made war upon us or challenged us 
to defend our right and our honor. The Austro-Hungarian Government has, 
indeed, avowed its unqualified indorsement and acceptance of the reckless and 
lawless submarine warfare adopted now without disguise by the Imperial 
German Government, and it has therefore not been possible for this Govern- 
ment to receive Count Tarnowski, the Ambassador recently accredited to 
this Government by the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary; 
but that Government has not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the 
United States on the seas, and I take the liberty, for the present at least, of 
postponing a discussion of our relations with the authorities at Vienna. We 
enter this war only where we are clearly forced into it because there are no other 
means of defending our right. 

It wUl be all the easier for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high 
spirit of right and fairness because we act without animus, not in enmity toward 
a people or with the desire to bring any injury or disadvantage upon them, 
but only in armed opposition to an irresponsible government which has thrown 
aside all considerations of humanity and of right and is running amuck. 

We are, let me say again, the sincere friends of the German people, and shall 
desire nothing so much as the early re-establishment of intimate relations of 
mutual advantage between us — however hard it may be for them for the time 
being to believe that this is spoken from our hearts. We have borne with 
their present Government through all these bitter months because of that 
friendship — exercising a patience and forbearance which would otherwise 
have been impossible. We shall happily still have an opportunity to prove 
that friendship in our daily attitude and actions toward the millions of men 
and women of German birth and native sympathy who live amongst us and 
share our life, and we shall be proud to prove it toward all who are in fact loyal 
to their neighbors and to the Government in the hour of test. They are, 
most of them as true and loyal Americans as if they had never known any other 
fealty or allegiance. They will be prompt to stand with us in rebuking and 
restraining the few who may be of a different mind and purpose. If there 



APPENDIX IV 563 

should be disloyalty, it will be dealt with with a firm hand of stern repression; 
but, if it lifts its head at all, it will lift it only here and there and without coun- 
tenance except from a lawless and malignant few. 

It is a distressing and oppressive duty, Gentlemen of the Congress, which 
I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months 
of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great 
peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, 
civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious 
than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried 
nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to au- 
thority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties 
of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free 
peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world 
itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, 
everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those 
who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her 
blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and 
the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. 



APPENDIX V 

BOOK LISTS 

A. A selected list of the books referred to in this history. These titles are 
quoted very briefly in the references at the ends of chapters; those not in 
this list are there quoted more fully. 

Adams, Charles Francis, Charles Francis Adams; Lee at Appomattox and 
Other Papers; Panama Canal Zone; Wednesday, August ig, 1812, 6.jO 
P.M. — The Birth of a World Power. 

Adams, Charles Francis, and Adams, Henry, Chapters of Erie and Other 
Essays. 

Adams, Henry, History of the United States. 

Andrews, Charles McLean, Colonial Self -Government; Colonial Period. 

Avery, Elroy McKendree, History of the United States and lis People. 

Bassett, John Spencer, Federalist System; Life of Andrew Jackson. 

Beard, Charles Austin, American Government and Politics; Contemporary 
American History. 

Bourne, Edward Gaylord, Spain in America; Essays in Historical Criti- 
cism. 

Bruce, H. Addington, Daniel Boone and the Wilderness Road; Romance of 
American Expansion. 

Channing, Edward, History of the United States; Jeffersonian System; Town 
and County Government in the English Colonies of North America. 

Channing, Edward, and Lansing, M. F., Story of the Great Lakes. 

Curtis, Edward S., North American Indian. 

Dewey, David Rich, National Problems. 

Dunbar, Seymour, History of Travel in America. 

Farrand, Max, Framing of the Constitution; Records of the Federal Convention. 

Farrand, Max, Ed., Journey to Ohio in 1810. 

Fish, Carl Russell, Civil Service and the Patronage. 

Fisher, Sydney George, Struggle for American Independence; True Ben- 
jamin Franklin; Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times; Making 
of Pennsylvania. 

Fiske, John, American Revolution; Beginnings of New England; Critical 
Period of American History; Discovery of America; Dutch and Quaker 
Colonies in America; Mississippi Valley in the Civil War; New France 
and New England; Old Virginia and Her Neighbors. 

Fite, Emerson David, Presidential Campaign of i860; Social and Industrial 
Conditions in the North During the Civil War. 

Foster, John W., American Diplomacy in the Orient; Century of American 
Diplomacy. 

564 



APPENDIX V 565 

Grinnell, George Bird, Trails of the Pathfinders. 

Hart, Albert Bushnell, Abolition and Slavery; Salmon Portland Chase. 

Hill, Frederick Trevor, Decisive Battles of the Law. 

HuLBERT, Archer B., Historic Highways of America. 

Johnson, Allen, Stephen Arnold Douglas. 

Latane, John H., United States as a World Power. 

Lecky, William Edward Hartpole, American Revolution. 

Lodge, Henry Cabot, Daniel Webster; George Washington. 

MacDonald, William, Select Documents, ij"/6-i86i. 

McMaster, John Bach, History of the People of the United States. 

Morse, John T., Abraham Lincoln; Benjamin Franklin; Thomas Jejerson; 

John Quincy Adams. 
NicoLAY, John C., and Hay, John, Abraham Lincoln. 
Ogg, Frederick Austin, Opening of the Mississippi. 
Osgood, Herbert L., American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century. 
Parkman, Francis, Conspiracy of Pontiac; Frontenac and France; Half 

Century of Conflict; Jesuits; Montcalm and Wolfe; Old Regime in Canada; 

Oregon Trail; Pioneers of France in the New World. 
Paxson, Frederick Logan, Civil War; Jndepcndence of the South American 

Republics; Last American Frontier. 
Prescott, William H., Conquest of Mexico; Conquest of Peru. 
Rhodes, James Ford, History of the United States. 
Roosevelt, Theodore, New Nationalism; Thomas Hart Benton; Winning 

of the West. 
RoYCE, JosiAH, California. 
ScHURZ, Carl, Henry Clay. 

Sparks, Edwin Earle, Expansion of the American People. 
Sparks, Edwin Earle, Ed., English Settlement in the Ulinois. 
Sumner, William Graham; Andrew Jackson. 

Thwaites, Reuben Gold, Daniel Boone; France in America; Father Mar- 
quette; How George Rogers Clark Won the Northwest. 
Thwaites, Reuben Gold, Ed., Journals of Lewis and Clark. 
Trevelyan, Sir George Otto, American Revolution. 
Turner, Frederick Jackson, New West; Western State Making. 
Tyler, Moses Coit, Literary History of the American Revolution. 
Van Tyne, Claude Halstead, American Revolution; Loyalists in the American 

Revolution. 
Villard, Oswald Garrison, John Brown. 
WiNSOR, Justin, Westward Movement. 
WiNSOR, Justin, Ed., Narrative and Critical History of America. 

B. Numerous references have been made to the following collections of sources. 
The titles are quoted very briefly in the references at the ends of chapters. 

American History Leaflets, Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart and Edward 
Channing. 



S66 APPENDIX V 

American History Told by Contemporaries, Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart. 

Great Epochs in American History, Edited by Francis W. Halsey. 

Jesuit Relations, Edited by Reuben Gold Thwaites. 

Old South Leaflets. 

Original Narratives of Early American History. 

Select Orations Illustrating American Political History, Edited by Samuel 

Bannister Harding. 
Source Book of American History, Edited by Albert Bushnell Hart. 
Trail Maker Series. 



INDEX 



"A. B. C." powers, strength, 494; 
mediation, 497-498 

Abolition, purpose, 288-289 

Abolition, mail matter and right of 
petition, 290-291 

Acadians, deported, 93 

Adams, Charles Francis, minister to 
Great Britain, 375; Liberal Repubhcan, 
418 

Adams, John, on education, iii; on local 
government, 114; lawyer, 124; Second 
Continental Congress, 127; on loyalists, 
133-134; Declaration of Independence, 
139; peace, 161; minister, 169; first 
Vice President, 179; aristocrat, 189; 
second President, 201; in private life, 
247 

Adams, John Quincy, Secretary of State, 
246; elected President, 1824, 251; 
supports internal improvements by 
Congress, 261; his measures, 265; 
defeated, 266; peace commissioner, 
246; abolition petitions, 290; on 
emancipation, 363 

Adams, Samuel, First Continental Con- 
gress, 127; at Concord and Lexington, 
128; on the Constitution, 176 

Agriculture, in the colonies, 101-104; 
on the frontier, 237-244; machinery, 
284, 405; statistics, 337 

Aguinaldo, Emilio, 476-477 

Alabama, depredations, 371, 374; award, 

423 

Alaska, purchased, 422; gold discoveries, 
468; government raihoad, 492; boun- 
dary arbitration, 486; southern line, 
250; territory, 525 

Albany Congress, 91 

Alien Act, 202 

Amendments of the Constitution, how 
made, 176; ten, 188; eleventh, 189; 
twelfth, 205; thirteenth, 381; four- 
teenth, 413, 414; fifteenth, 414; six- 
teenth, 526; seventeenth, 526 



America, native, inhabitants, 26-26; 

plants, fruits and animals, 24-25; 

climate, 26; rivers and mountains, 26- 

27; the interior, 27; natural resources, 

27-28 
American Federation of Labor, 438 
Anarchists, 437 
Anarchy, symptoms of, 170 
Andre, John, spy, 156 
Andros, Edmund, head of Dominion of 

New England, 77; fate, 80 
Annapolis, Convention, 173; Naval 

Academy, 308; Civil War, 354 
Antietam, battle, 362 
Anti-Federahst party, 191 
Anti-lottery law, 447 
Appalachian Forest Reserve Act, 523 
Appomattox Court House, 379 
Arbitration, industrial, 438; at The 

Hague, 485-486; Alaska boundary, 

486; Taft treaties, 486; General 

Grant, 488; for railroad employees, 519 
Area, America and Europe compared, 28 
Aristocracy, in early Massachusetts, 50; 

colonies in general, 189; Federalists, 

189 
Aristotle, i 
Arnold, Benedict, after Concord and 

Lexington, 130; in Canada, 131; Fort 

Stanwbc, 146; Saratoga, 147; treason, 

155-156; death, 156 
Arthur, Chester A., removed, 429; 

President, 432 
Articles of Confederation, 166-167; 

Appendix, 536 
Association, 127 
Assumption of state debts, 186 
Atlanta, taken, 377 
Atlantic cable, 398 
Australian ballot, 443 
Ayllon, Lucas Vasquez de, 14 



Bacon, Roger, 2 
Bacon's RebeUion, 70 



567 



568 



INDEX 



Baffin, William, 17 

Bahama Islands, 59, 74 

Balboa, Vasco Nunez de, 12 

Ballinger, Richard A., 524 

Baltimore, attacked, 226-227; canal and 

railroad, 264; bloodshed, 353; igio, 

509; fire, 505 
Banks, Nathaniel P., 361 
Banks, First Bank of the United States, 

187; Second Bank of the United 

States, 230-231; opposition, 257-258; 

273-274; presidential contest, i8j2, 

273-274; National Banking Act, i86j, 

388; IQ14, 521-522 
Barbados, 59 

Bates, Edwin, cabinet, 351 
Bayonne Decree, 221 
Beauregard, Pierre G. T., 355 
Beecher, Henry Ward, 365 
Behaim, Martin, 2 
Bell, Alexander Graham, 402 
Belligerency, Confederacy, 357 
Benjamin, Judah P., 346 
Bennington, battle, 147 
Benton, Thomas H., 247 
Bering, Vitus, 20 
Bering Sea Fisheries, 458 
Bill of Rights, 79 
Birney, James G., 295 
Bismarck, Prince Otto von, view of 

Monroe Doctrine, 494 
Black Warrior, 335 
Blaine, James G., campaign iSy6, 419; 

seeks nomination, 430; nominated, 434; 

Secretary of State, 434; ill-luck, 435; 

defeat, 435; comparison with Clay, 435; 

reciprocity in McKinley Tariff Act, 

447; Pan-American Congress, 455 ^ 
Blair, Francis P., 356 
Blair, Montgomery, cabinet, 351 
Bland-Allison Act, 429 
Blockade, 196, 214, 356-357, 501 
Blockade running, 372-373 
Bon Homme Richard, 155 
Bond issues, 463 
Bonus Bill, 235 
Boone, Daniel, 135 
Booth, John Wilkes, 380 
Boston, Colonial, 109; Massacre, 123- 

124; Tea Party, 125; Port Bill, 126; 

siege of, 131; fire, 505; igio, 509 



Boxer Rebellion, 498 
Braddock's defeat, 92 
Bradford, William, 46 
Bragg, Braxton, in Kentucky, 359; 

forced from Chattanooga, 368 
Breckinridge, John C, candidate, 343 
Brewster, William, 46 
British and French Wars, early attacks, 

88; three minor wars, 88; Seven 

Years' War, 90-96 
Brown, John, Kansas, 329; Harper's 

Ferry, 340 
Bryan, William J., nominated, 465-466, 

470, 477; convention orator, 465, 481 
Buchanan, James, candidate, 330; Dred 

Scott Decision, 331; Lecompton Con- 
stitution, ^^;^; secession, 347 
Buffalo herds, 408-410 
Buffalo, Pan-American Exposition, 47S; 

1810, 238; 1910, 509 
Bull Run, First battle, 354-355; Second 

battle, 362 
Bunker Hill, 129-130 
Burgoyne, John, 145 
Burke, Edmund, 137 
Burnside, Ambrose E., 369 
Burr, Aaron, conspiracy, 213 
Butler, Benjamin F., on contraband, 

363; nominated, 434 

Cabinet meeting, under Washington, 

183 

Cabot, John, 9 

Cabral, Pedro Alvarez de, 8 

Cabrillo, Juan R., 14 

Calhoun, John C, in Congress, 220; 
favors loose construction, 235; Secre- 
tary of War, 246; Presidential candi- 
date, 1824, 251; opponent of tariff, 
259-260; Vice President, 266; Secre- 
tary of State, 298; Compromise of 
18^0, 320 

California, taken, 306; anti-slavery, 318; 
mines, 338; and Japan, 500 

Calvert, Cecilius, 57 

Camden, battle, 157-158 

Cameron, Simon, cabinet, 351 

Canada, Invasion of, 131 

Cannon, Joseph G., 526-527 

Cantino, map, lo-ii 

Capital and labor, Jackson's time, 282; 



after 1865, 393-400; since igoo, 512- 

519 

Carnegie, Andrew, 485, 507 

Carolina, North and South, settlement, 
72-73, unwise constitution, 73 

Caroline, 294 

Cartier, Jacques, explorer, 14; welcome 
by Indians, 22 

Carver, John, 46 

Cass, Lewis, 318 

Cattle ranches, 406-407 

Cedar Mountain, battle, 362 

Centennial Exposition, 402 

Champlain, Samuel de, explorations, 17; 
Indian alHance, 18-19; explores Great 
Lakes, 18; Colonial Governor, 84; 
Panama Canal, 310 

Chancellorsville, battle, 367 

Channing, William E., on Texas, 299 

Charles I, King of England, 46-4S; 67 

Charles II, King of England, 69 

Charleston, South Carolina, siege of, 132; 
taken, 157; Fort Sumter, 351-352; 
earthquake, 505 

Chastellux, Marquis dj, on making a 
settlement, 102-104 

Chattanooga, Bragg retreats to, 359 

Chase, Salmon P., cabinet, 351; seeks 
nomination, 415-416; Liberal Repub- 
lican, 418 

Cherry Valley, Massacre, 152 

Chicago, 1810, 238; growth, 337-338; 
fire, 504; World's Fair, 461; igio, 509 

Chickamauga, battle, 368 

Chile, 456-457 

China, beginnings of commercial rela- 
tions, 199-200; closer trade relations, 
313-314; Open Door, 498; dollar 
diplomacy, 499-500; Republic, 500; 
immigration from, restricted, 433-434 

Chippewa, battle, 226 

Cincinnati, 1810, 238; igio, 509 

Cities, of West, growth, 509; in the East, 

509 
City Manager Plan, 530 
Civil Service, under Jackson, 268-269; 

reorganized 1861, 351; reform, 429- 

430; quarrels under Garfield, 431-432; 

new law, 432-433; general survey 

since President Arthur, 525 
Civil War, 350-391 



INDEX 569 

Clark, George Rogers, 152-153 

Clay, Henry, early life, 220; Speaker, 
222; on causes of war, 223; candidate, 
1824, 251; 1832, 273-274; 1844, 301- 
302; Compromise 1850, 319; death, 
324 

Clayton Anti-Trust Law, 517 

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, 31 1-3 12 

Clermont, 236 

Cleveland, 1810, 238; 1910, 509 

Cleveland, Grover, elected, 1884, 434; 
career, 435-436; defeated, 1888, 442; 
elected, i8g2, 453; unpopularity, 464; 
fails of renomination, 465 

CHnton, DeWitt, 225 

Clinton, Sir Henry, at Charleston, South 
Carolina, 132; retreat, 151 

Coal, anthracite, 282 

Cold Harbor, battle, 376 

Colombia, treaty, 1846, 310; and Panama 
canal, 490, 492 

Colonies, government, 58, 113-115 

Colonization, English, resume, 82 

Colonization, French, early failures, 83; 
in Canada, 84-85; in West Indies, 86; 
on the Mississippi, 86 

Colonization, of negroes, 364 

Colorado, mines, 340 

Columbia River, discovery, 199-200 

Columbus, Christopher, Greek source of 
his belief in the rotundity of the earth, 
I ; influenced by ToscaneUi, 2 ; and the 
Northmen, 4; by Marco Polo, 4; by 
Portuguese, 5; type of Renaissance, 5; 
preparation for voyages, 5; first voy- 
age and welcome home, 6; other 
voyag2s, 6-8; later unpopularity and 
death, 8; welcome by Indians, 22 

Commission form of city government, 
529-530 

Committees of Correspondence, 124-125 

"Common Sense," 138 

Compromises, constitutional convention, 
174-175; 1820, 255; 1832, 273; 1850, 
"Omnibus Bill," 320-322; proposed, 
1 860-1 861, 348 

Comstock Lode, 340 

Concord and Lexington, battle, 128 

Confederate States of America, 346 

Congress, 360 

ConkUng, Roscoe, 430 



570 



INDEX 



Connecticut, settlement, 51; early gov- 
ernment, 52 

Conservation, 523-525; forests, 523; 
mineral lands, 523; arid lands, 523- 
524; water power. 524 

Constitution and Giierrierc, 224 

Constitution, Confederate States of 
America, 347 

Constitution, United States of America, 
appendix III; strict versus loose con- 
struction, 187, 211; Convention, lySy, 
172-176 

Constitutional Union party, 344 

Continentals, 133 

Continuous voyage, 214, 501 

Contraband, 196, 372-373 

Conway's Cabal, 150 

Cook, James, 20 

Cooper, Peter, 420 

Copperheads, 370 

Cornwallis, Lord, at Charleston, South 
Carolina, 132; at Yorktown, 159 

Coronado, Francisco de, 15-16 

Corporations, characteristics, 398; 
growth, 512-513 

Corruption, 400 

Cortes, Hernando, conquers Mexico, 14; 
welcome by Indians, 22 

Cotton gin, 233-234 

Cotton growing, and cotton gin, 237 

Cowpens, battle, 158 

Coxey's Army, 462 

Crawford, William H., Secretary of the 
Treasury, 246; Presidential candidate, 
1824, 251 

Crevecoeur, "What is an American," 
100 

Crittenden, John J., Compromise, 348 

Cromwell, Oliver, 67 

Cuba, efforts to acquire, 312-313 

Cuba, filibustering expeditions, 335; 
revolt, 186S, 424; revolt i8g6, 470; 
belligerency and neutrality, 470-471; 
intervention, 471-472; sanitary prob- 
lems, 481; new republic, 482 

Cumberland, 360 

Cumberland Gap, 134 

Cumberland Road, 235 

Cunard line, 282 

Custer, George A., 404 

CyUnder printing press, 282 



Dale, Sir Thomas, 39 

Danbury Hatters, 516-517 

Danish America, 65; 502 

Daguerreotype, 282 

Dartmouth College Case, 258 

Davenport, John, 52 

Davis, Jefferson, President, 346; opposes 

compromise, 349; elected unanimously, 

376; career, 384 
Davis, John, 16 

Debs, Eugene V., 463, 478, 481 
Debt, national, 185; Jackson, 278; Civil 

War, 381; Cleveland, 440-441 
Declaration of Independence, 135-136, 

138-141; appendix I 
Declaration of the Rights of Man, 

France, 194 
Declaration of War, against Great 

Britain, 223 
Delaware, settled, 76 
Delaware, Lord, 39 
Demarcation line, 9 
Democracy, colonial, 70, 73; after lySg, 

191; under Jefferson, 207-208; under 

Jackson, 268-269 
Democratic party, 291 
Democratic-Republican party, 191; 

theory and practice, 208; end, 230, 

246 
Denver, igio, 509 
Deserters, 150 
Detroit, 1810, 238; surrendered, 224; 

recovered, 226; igio, 509 
Dewey, George, New Orleans, 359; at 

Manila Bay, 472-474 
Diaz, Bartholomew, 5 
Dickinson, John, "Farmers' Letters," 

123; First Continental Congress, 127; 

"Olive Branch" Petition, 136; Articles 

of Confederation, 136; constitutional 

convention, 174 
Dix, Dorothea L., 286 
Dix, John A., 347 
Dee, John, map, 17 
Dollar diplomacy, 499 
Dominion of New England, 77; over- 
throw, 80 
Dorr, Thomas W., 285 
Douglas, Stephen A., squatter sover- 
eignty, 325-326; earlj' career, 327- 

328; campaign 1856, 330; Lecompton 



INDEX 



571 



Constitution, s^s> "Freeport Doc- 
trine," 334; candidate, 343; supports 
Lincoln, 353 

Dow, Neal, 431; prohibition law, 286 

Draft riots, 369 

Drago Doctrine, 494-495 

Drake, Sir Francis, attacks on Spain, 34; 
circumnavigation of the globe, 34-35; 
welcome by Indians, 22 

Dred Scott Decision, 330-332, 364 

Dunmore, Lord, 131 

Dutch, in Holland, 61; in VaUey of 
Hudson River, 61; poor colonizers, 62; 
tolerant in religion, 64; in the West 
Indies, 64; conquer New Sweden, 65; 
conquest of New Netherland by 
England, 71-72 

Early, Jubal A., Shenandoah Valley, 378 

Eaton, Theophilus, 52 

Economic changes, after Civil War, 393 

Edison, Thomas A., 402 

Education, in Massachusetts, 55; in vari- 
ous colonies, 111-112; in early Vir- 
ginia, 70-71; in Jackson's time, 286- 
287; in Civil War, 389; twentieth 
century, 511 

Edward VI, King of England, 42 

El Caney, battle, 474 

Elizabeth, Queen of England, 43 

Electoral Commission, iSy6, 420-421 

Electoral Law, 443 

Ellsworth, Oliver, 174 

Emancipation, in District of Columbia, 
364; compensated, 364; proclamation, 

363-367 
Embargo Act, 217-218 ' 
Equal Rights party, 434 
"Era of good feehng," 247 
Erie Canal, 262-263 
Estaing, Count d', 151 
Ether, 282 

Exposition and Protest, 259-260 
European War, 501-502 
Excise tax, 185 
Expatriation, 216 



Factory System, origin, 

changed conditions, 399 
Farmers' Alliance, 452 
"Farmers' Letters," 123 



281-282; 



Farragut, David G., New Orleans, 359; 

at Mobile Bay, 378 
Federal government, nature, 176-177; 

weak, 457 
"Federalist," 176 
FederaUst party, 191, 205, 230 
Fihbustering expeditions, 335, 336 
Financial panic, iSjy, 292; iSj/, 339; 

1860-1861, 386-387; 1S73, 401-402; 

1S93, 459; 1907, 504 
First Continental Congress, 127 
Fish, Hamilton, Treaty of Washington, 

423; South American mediation, 424; 

Cuban insurrection, 424 
Fishing, in the colonial period, 104-105 
Fitch, John, 236 
Fletcher v. Peck, 259 
Florida, East and West, loyal, 133; 

trouble with Spain, 247; purchase, 248 
Florida, 374 
Foote, Andrew H., 358 
Force Acts, 418 
Forcible collection of international debts, 

495 

Foreign debts, 293 

Foreign population, 505 

Fort Donelson, 358 

Fort Duquesne, 93 

Fort Henry, 358 

Fort McHenry, 227 

Fort Pillow, 359 

Fort Sumter, 351-352 

Fort Ticonderoga and Crown Point, 94, 
130 

France, alliance with, 148; French lands 
held, 154; alliance disregarded, 194- 
195; troubles with, 201-202 

Franklin, Benjamin, in Albany Congress, 
91; on immigration, 98; on causes of 
Seven Years' War, 106; Second Con- 
tinental Congress, 136; new plan of 
union, 136; agent in London, 137; 
Declaration of Independence, 139; 
peace, 161; Constitutional convention, 

173 
Fredericksburg, battle, 362 
"Freeport Doctrine," 334 
Free Soil party, 318 
Fremont, John C, candidate, 330; on 

emancipation, 363 
Friction matches, 282 



57^ 



INDEX 



Frobisher, Martin, i6 

Frontier, meaning of the word, 29; 
America as a European frontier, 
29-30; reasons for coming to the 
American frontier, 30; nature, 98-115, 
237-244, 403-410; disappearance, 451 

Fugitive Slave Law, 322-323 

Fulton, Robert, 236 

Gadsden Purchase, 307 

Gage, Thomas, Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, 128; at Bunker Hill, 129- 
130; criticism of, 131 

Gallatin, Albert, Secretary of the Treas- 
ury, 207; peace commissioner, 246; 
in private life, 247 

Galveston, Texas, tidal wave, 505; 
Galveston plan, 529-530 

Qama, Vasco da, 5 

Garfield, James A., elected, 431; career, 
431; assassinated, 432 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 288, 290; 365 

Gas, artificial, 280 

Gates, Horatio, Saratoga, 147; in the 
South, 157 

Genet, Edmond Charles, 194-195 

George IH, arbitrary government, 122; 
proclamation of J7<5j, 134; discredited, 
161 

Georgia, founded, 81-82; and the 
Indians, 256-257, 275 

Germany and United States, 501-502 

Gerry, Elbridge, constitutional conven- 
tion, 174, 176 

Gettysburg, battle, 368 

Gibbons v. Ogden, 258-259 

Gibraltar, 160 

Gilbert, Sir Humphrej^, 35 

Gold, CaUfornia, 309; other discoveries, 
468 

Gold Democratic party, 460 

Gold reserve, 460 

Gold Standard Act, 469 

Gomez, Estevan, 14 

Gompers, Samuel, 438 

Gosnold, Bartholomew, 37 

Grangers, origin, 406; growth, 426 

Granger Cases, 427 

Grant, Ulysses S., Mexican War, 308; 
Fort Donelson, 358; Shiloh and Cor- 
inth, 358; Lookout Mountain and 



Missionary Ridge, 369; before Rich- 
mond, 376; victory, 379; career and 
estimate, 383; elected President, 416; 
re-elected, 418; third term, 430-431; on 
arbitration, 488 

Grasse, Comte de, fieet, 159 

Gray, Robert, 20 

Great Britain, relations with, 357, 372- 

375 
Greeley, Horace, editor, 287; radical, 

365; nominated, 418 
Greenback party, origin, 420; growth, 

427 
Greenbacks, 388-389, 428 
Greene, Nathaniel, 158 

Habeas corpus, 369 

The Hague, first peace conference, i8^g, 
484-485; second, 487 

Hakluyt, Richard, ^^ 

Hale, John P., 325 

Hale, Nathan, 156 

Hamilton, Alexander, Constitutional Con- 
vention, 174; "Federalist," 176; Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, 183; on the 
national bank, 187; AUen and Sedition 
Laws, 202; killed, 213 

Hancock, John, at Concord and Lexing- 
ton, 128; on the Constitution, 176 

Hancock, Winfield Scott, Gettysburg, 
368; nominated, 431 

Harriman, Edward H., 513 

Harrison, Benjamin, elected, 441-442; 
renominated, 452 

Harrison, William Henry, Tippecanoe, 
222; in Canada, 226; Presidential 
contest, iSj6, 291; President, 294-295 

Harrison's Landing, 361 

Hartford Convention, 229 

Harvard College, 55 

Hawaii, independence, 314-315; progress, 
315; revolution, 459; annexed, 476 

Hawkins, Sir John, 34 

Hayes, Rutherford B., nominated, 419; 
elected, 419-421; charges against, 
421; end of reconstruction, 421; and 
civil service reform, 429; pohcies, 430 

Helper, Hinton Rowan, "Impending 
Crisis," 342-343 

Henry VIII, King of England, 42 

Henry, Patrick, First Continental Con- 



INDEX 



573 



gress, 127; Governor, 153; the Consti- 
tution, 1 76 

Hepburn Rate Law, 514 

Hessians, 137 

Homer, i 

Homestead Law, 292-293, 403 

Hood, John B., 379 

Hooker, Joseph, 367 

Hooker, Thomas, 52 

House of Burgesses, first meeting, 40 

"House of Governors," 524 

House of Representatives, in the conven- 
tion of 1787, 174; rules under Reed, 
445; under Cannon, 526-527 

Howe, Sir William, 132, 143; 146 

Hudson Bay Company, 74 

Hudson, Henry, explorer, 17-18 

Hudson River, discovery, 17 

Huerta, Victoriano, 497 

Hughes, Charles Evans, 502 

Hull, Isaac, 224 

Hull, William, 224 

Hunter, David, on emancipation, 363 

Hutchinson, Anne, 51 

Illinois Central Railroad, 337 

Immigrants, in colonial period, 98-101; 
Revolutionary War, 164; statistics, 
338; opposition, 338-339; in Civil 
War, 381; restriction, 433-434; statis- 
tics, 505; individuals, 507 

Impeachment, of judges, 209; President 
Johnson, 415 

"Impending Crisis," 342-343 

Impressment, 197; 215-217; 229-230 

Income tax, imposed, 462; unconstitu- 
tional, 463; the law at present, 521; 
constitutional, 521; amendment to 
Constitution, 526 

Indians, attitude toward Europeans, 22; 
mode of life, 22-23; physical charac- 
teristics, 23-24; grade of civilization, 
24; religion, 24; native plants, fruits 
and animals, 24-25; various tribes, 26; 
origin, 26; slavery, 31-32; Pequots, 
53; King Philip's War, 54; cordial 
relations with the French, 85; assist 
the French in war, 89; Indian trade, 
105-106; defeated by Daniel Boone, 
135; Iroquois, defeated, 152; as 
soldiers, 152; defeated in Ohio, 192- 



193; Indiana, 222; removed to the 
West, 256-257, 275; Illinois and 
Wisconsin, 276; Florida, 247, 277; 
wars after 1865, 4°4~40S; reserva- 
tions, 449-450; present poUcy, 450- 
451; statistics, 451 

Initiative, 527 

Injunctions, 462-463 

Internal improvements by the national 
government, 234-235; opposition, 261- 
262; by states, 279; modern, 492- 

493 
Interstate Commerce Commission, 439 
Intolerable Acts, 126 
Inventions, 282-284; 402; 511 
Island Number 10, 359 
Italy, trouble with, 457 

Jackson, Andrew, in Florida, 247; 
Presidential candidate, 1824, 251; 
elected President, 266; character, 268; 
and nullification, 272-273; bank and 
other policies, 273-277; censured, 274 

Jamaica, 59 

James I, King of England, 44 

James II, King of England, 79 

Jamestown, 38 

Japan, opening up of , 314; trouble with, 
500 

Jay, John, Second Continental Congress, 
136; peace, 161; Secretary, 166; in 
Spain, 174; Chief Justice, 188; Jay 
treaty, 197-198 

Jefferson, Thomas, Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, 139; Second Continental 
Congress, 136; supports George Rogers 
Clark, 153; in France, 174; Secretary 
of State, 183; on the national bank, 
187; President, 207; achievements as 
political leader, 207; inaugural address, 
207-208; in private, Hfe, 247 

Jesuits in America, 85 

Johnson, Andrew, nominated, 377; his 
attempted assassination, 381; career, 
411; reconstruction, 412-413; im- 
peached, 415; seeks nomination, 415- 
416 

Johnston, Joseph, surrenders, 379 

Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 505 

Joliet, discoverer, 18; his map, 18-19 
and frontispiece 



574 



INDEX 



Jones, John Paul, 154 
Judiciary Act, 188 

Kansas, 

Kentucky, beginnings, 134; statehood, 

193; loyal, 356 
Key, Francis Scott, 227 
King, Rufus, constitutional convention, 

174; candidate, 246; in Congress, 247 
King's Mountain, battle, 158 
Klondike, gold discoveries, 468 
Knights of Labor, 436-437 
Know Nothing party, 339; 330 
Knox, Henry, 184 
Knox, Philander C, 496 
Kosciusko, Thaddeus, 148 
Ku Klux Klan, 417—418 

La Cosa map, 9-10 

La Verendrye brothers, discoverers, 19 

Labor reformers, 418 

Labor-saving machinery in Civil War, 

405 

Labor troubles, Jackson's time, 282 

Labor unions, 399-400 

Lafayette, Marquis de, 148 

Lake Erie, naval victory, 226 

Land Grant Railroads, 337; deprived of 
land, 448 

Lands, Western, 168 

La Salle, Sieur de, 18 

Laurens, Henry, 161 

Lecompton Constitution, 332-333 

Lee, Charles, 144 

Lee, Richard Henry, First Continental 
Congress, 127; motion for indepen- 
dence, 139; on the Constitution, 176 

Lee, Robert E., 308, 362, 367, 368, 379, 

384-385 

Lewis and Clark, 20, 212 

Liberator, 288-289 

Liberal Republican party, 418 

Liberty party, 291 

Lincoln, Abraham, Dred Scott Decision, 
332; early career, 333-334; Lincoln- 
Douglas debates, 334-335; candidate, 
344; elected, 346; opposes compromise, 
348; first inaugural, 350; on emanci- 
pation, 363; arbitrary government, 
369-370; renominated, 376; doubts 
re-election, 377; re-elected, 378; assas- 



sinated, 378-381; career, 381-382; 
second inaugural, 382; at Gettysburg, 
382 

Lincoln, Benjamin, 157; Secretary, 166 

Literature, 287, 511 

Livingston, Robert, Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, 139; Secretary, 166 

Local government, in New England, 
114-115; in other colonies, 115 

Lockwood, Belva A., nominated, 434 

Log cabin, 243 

London Company, charter, 38; loses char- 
ter, 40-41 

Long Island, battle, 143 

Longstreet, James, 369 

Lookout Mountain, battle, 369 

Lopez, Narcisso, 335 

Los Angeles, igio, 509 

Louisburg captured and exchanged, 90; 
again taken, 93 

Louisiana, purchase, 210-21 1; state, 212 

Lowell, Massachusetts, 281 

Loyal colonies, 133 

Loyalists, distribution, 132-133; denied 
suffrage, 136; in the South, 157; fate, 
162-163, 168; 169 

Lundy, Benjamin, 288 

Lundy's Lane, battle, 226 

Liisitania, 501-502 

Lyon, Nathaniel, 356 

Macdonough, Thomas, \'ictory, 227 

Macon's Bill No. 2, 221 

Madison, James, Constitutional con- 
vention, 173; "Notes," 173; Secre- 
tary of State, 207; President, 220; re- 
elected, 225; in private life, 247 

Magellan, Ferdinand, 13-14 

Maine, destroyed, 471 

Maine, founded, 53; union with Massa- 
chusetts, 53; statehood, 255 

Manila Bay, naval battle, 472-474 

Mann-Elkins Act, 515 

Manufacturing, colonial, 108; fostered 
by tariff, 184; during European wars, 
194; effect of War of 181 2, 231-232; 
new manufacturing towns, 232-233; 
and tariff of 1816, 233; consolidation. 

395 
Marbury v. Madison, 208-209 
Marietta, 172 



INDEX 



575 



Marion, Francis, 157 

Marquette, Jacques, 18 

Marshall, John, Chief Justice, 204 

Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 259 

Mary, Queen of England, 42 

Maryland, settlement, 57; Toleration 
Act, 57 

Mason and DLxon's Line, 76 

Massachusetts, settled, 48-50; self-gov- 
ernment preserved, 68; independent 
spirit, 69; punishment, 70 

MaximiUan, in Mexico, 375 

Mayflower, 45 

Maysville Road, 274-275 

McClellan, George B., placed in com- 
mand, 355; in West Virginia, 356; 
before Richmond, 361-362; nominated, 

377 

McClure, Robert, discoverer, 20 

McCormick, Cyrus H., reaper, 284 

McCuUoch V. ALaryland, 257-258 

McDowell, Irvin, 354 

McKinley, William, McKinley Tariff 
Law, 447; nominated and elected, 464; 
renominated and re-elected 477-478; 
assassinated, 478 

Meade, George G., 367 

Meat Inspection Act, 514 

Meat packing, 407-408 

Memminger, Charles G., 346 

Merchant marine, 372 

Merritt, Wesley, in PhiHppines, 474 

Mexico, discovered, 14-15; riches, 30; 
war, 304-307; French in, 375; expul- 
sion of French, 422; revolution since 
1911, 496 

Militia, whiskey rebeUiori, 192 

Mining, progress, 338 

MinneapoHs, 1910, 509 

Minnesota, 360 

Missionary Ridge, battle, 369 

Mississippi River, discovery, 16 

Missouri, admitted, 255-256; for union, 

355 
Mitchell, John, 518 
Mobile Bay, 378 
Mohammedans, i 
Molasses Act of 1733, 107 
Monilor and Merrimac, 359-360 
Monmouth, battle, 152 
Monroe, James, minister to France, 199; 



minister to Great Britain, 217; Secre- 
tary of State, 220; President, 246; 
re-elected President, 1820, 251 

Monroe Doctrine, origin, 249-250; Mex- 
ico, 375, 422; in Venezuela, 469; 
danger, 476; present day, 493-498 

Monroe treaty, 217 

Montesquieu, Charles de, 141 

Montgomery, Richard, 131 

Morgan, Daniel, 158 

Morgan, John Pierpont, 463; 513 

Mormons, 287-288 

Morris, Gouverneur, constitutional con- 
vention, 174 

Morris, Robert, superintendent, 166; 
constitutional convention, 174 

Morristown Heights, camp, 145 

Moultrie, WiUiam, at Fort Moultrie, 132 

Mount Vernon, meeting at, 172; depart- 
ure of Washington, 179 

Murfreesboro, battle, 359 

Narvaez, Pamiilo de, 15 

National Silver party, 466 

Naturalization, Act, 202; English con- 
tention, 216; twentieth century, 506 

Navigation Laws, contents, 71; working, 
107-108; more rigidly enforced, 118 

Navy, decreased, 208; growth, 447; 
around the world, 498 

Negro soldiers, 367 

Negro suffrage, 508 

Neutral Rights, on the sea, 196; accord- 
ing to Jay treaty, 198; more trouble, 
214; settlement, 229-230 

Neutrality, declared by the L^nited 
States, 195 

Nevada, mines, 340 

New England, opposition to 1812 War, 
228-229 

New England, Confederation, formation 
and working, 54; proceedings, 54-55; 
Dominion of, 77-80 

New Hampshire, founded, 52-53; part 
of Massachusetts, 53; separate colony, 
70,80 

New Haven, founded, 52; part of Con- 
necticut, 70 

New Jersey, settlement, 72 

New Jersey plan, constitutional conven- 
tion, 174 



576 



INDEX 



New Orleans, victory, 227-228; iSio, 238; 
captured, 359; igio, 50S 

New Sweden, 65 

New York City, colonial, 109; growth, 
338; draft riots, 369; public improve- 
ments, 492-493; igio, 509 

Nicaragua, filibustering expeditions, 336; 
Clayton-Bulwer treaty, 312; Hay- 
Pauncefote treaty, 489 

Nicolet, Jean, 18, 20 

Non-importation, in colonial times, 119, 
123, 127; under President Jefferson, 
217 

Non-Intercourse Act, 221 

North, Lord, Intolerable Acts, 126; 
measures of conciliation, 137; com- 
promise, 148; resignation, 161 

Northmen, 2-3 

Northwest Passage, search, 14-15; dis- 
covered, 20 

Nova Scotia, deportation of inhabitants, 
92-93; loyal, 133 

Nullification, 272; personal liberty laws, 
322-323; negro suffrage, 508 

Ohio, bone of contention, in war, gi; 
settlement, 172; statehood, 193 

Oakland, 509 

Oklahoma, settlement and statehood, 449 

Orders in Council, 215; repealed, 223 

Ordinance of 17S7, 171 

Oregon, claims of the United States, 300; 
claims of the British, 300; immigra- 
tion, 301; campaign 1S44, 302; an- 
nexed, 308; anti-slavery, 317 

Ostend Manifesto, 336 

Pacific Railroad, projected, 313; North- 
ern, 44S; merger, 514; Union Pacific, 
396-397; scandal, 400-401; union with 
Southern Pacific, 516 

Paine, Thomas, "Common Sense," 138; 
"The Crisis," 145, 162 

Pan-American Congresses, 455 

Pan-American Exposition, BufTalo, 478 

Pan-American Union, 455-456 

Panama Canal, early history, 310; later 
history, 489-492; tolls, 490-491; 
French, 453-454 

Panama Congress, 256 

Panama Railroad, 310 



Paper money. Revolution, 150; Jack- 
son's time, 279-280; Civil War, 
388-389 

Parker, Alton B., 478 

Peace Conference, 1S61, 348 

Pendleton, George H., 432 

Penn, William, 75-76 

Pensions, vetoed by Cleveland, 447; 
Dependent Pension Law, 447; service 
pension, 526; extension, 1912, 526 

Pennsylvania, founded, 74-77 

Perry, Oliver H., 226 

Pershing, Genl. J. J. 498, 502 

Personal Liberty Laws, 323 

Peru, discovered, 14; riches, 30 

Petersburg, 376-377 

Petitions, anti-slavery, 290 

Petroleum, discovered, 339 

Philadelphia, founded, 75; colonial, no; 
captured, 145; and the Pennsylvania 
canal, 263; Exposition, 402; 1910, 509 

Philip, King 54 

Philippine Islands, acquired, 474; insur- 
rection, 477; increased self-govern- 
ment, 483 

Phillips, Wendell, 365 

Pickens, Andrew, 157 

Pickett, George E., 368 

Pierce, Frankhn, Mexican War, 308; 
President, 325 

Pike, Zebulon M., 212-213 

Pinckney, Charles, constitutional con- 
vention, 174 

Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth, constitu- 
tional convention, 174; commissioner 
to France, 201; presidential candidate, 
205, 213, 218 

Pineda, Alonzo de, 13 

Pirates, of Mediterranean Sea, 213; in 
America, 74, 78 

Pitt, William, 94, 137 

Pittsburg, foundation of, 93-94; 1810, 
238; railroad strikes, 426; 1910, 509 

Pizarro brothers, conquer Peru, 14 

Plymouth, settled, 45 

Plymouth Company, charter, 38; at- 
tempts settlement, 41-42 

Polk, James K., presidential candidate, 
301; elected, 303; policies, 304 

Polo, Marco, 4 

Ponce de Leon, 12 



INDEX 



577 



Pontiac, Conspiracy, 119 
Population, in colonial period, 98; 
growth, 1810-1S40, 238; statistics, 

509-511 
Populist party, rise, 452; measures, 

527-529 

Port Hudson, 388 

Portland, Oregon, 1910, 509 

Porto Rico, taken, 474; new government, 
483; prosperity, 483-484 

Portuguese voyages, 5 

Portuguese America, 32 

Post Office, reforms, in Civil War times, 
387; later, 522 

Powderly, Terrence V., 436 

Prairie country, 242-243 

Prescott, William, 130 

President of the U. S., powers, 175 

Presidential election, 77(S5-5p, 179; 1792, 
191; 1796, 201; 1800, 205; 1804, 213; 
1808, 218; 1812, 225; 1816, 246; 1820, 
251; 1824, 251-252; 1828, 260; 1832, 
273; 1836, 291; 1840, 294-295; 1844, 
301-302; 1848, 318; 1852, 325; 1856, 
329-330; i860, 343-346; 1864, 376- 
378; 1868, 415-416; 1872, 418; 1876, 
419-421; 1880, 430-431; 1S84, 434; 
1888, 441-442; 1892, 452-453; 1S96, 
464-467; 1900, 477-478; 1904, 478- 
479; 1908, 470; 1912, 479-481; 1 916, 
502 

Presidential Succession Act, 442 

Prevost, Sir George, 227 

Primaries, direct, 528 

Prince Henry the Navigator, 5 

Princeton, battle, 145; college, 112 

Pring, Martin, explorer, 37 

Privateers, in the Revolution, 155; 
181 2-1 81 §, 228. 

Proclamation of 1763, 133 

Proclamation of rebellion, 137 

Progressive party, 480 

Prohibition party, 420 

Prosperity, after 1819, 278-279; Civil 
War times, 387; 1896-1907, 504-512 

Protestant Reformation, 42 

Ptolemy, 2 

Public lands, liberal disposition of, 193; 
laws, 293 

PubHc improvements, Jefferson, 234-236, 
Adams, 261-262, Jackson, 274-275; 



modern doctrine, 492; New York 
State, 492; New York City, 492-493 

Pulaski, Count, 148 

Pullman Works, strike, 462 

Pure Food Law, 514 

Puritans, origin and beliefs, 43; difficul- 
ties with King Charles I, 46-48; emi- 
gration to Massachusetts 48-49; 
self-government, 49-50; education, 
55; treatment of Indians, 53-54, 55; 
intolerance, 56; Quakers, 56; witch- 
craft, 56; Revolution in England, 67 

Putnam, Israel, 130 

Quakers, beliefs, 74-75; in New England, 

56; in Pennsylvania, 74-75 
Quebec, captured, 95 
Quebec Act, contents, 126; wisdom, 133 

Railroads, beginnings, 264-265; increase, 
279; statistics, 337; consolidation, 
394-395; construction, 396; abuses, 
438-439; regulation of rates, 427; 
centralization, 513 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, promotes coloniza- 
tion, 36; in South America, 37 

Rambouillet Decree, 221 

Randolph, Edmund, constitutional con- 
vention, 173; Attorney General, 184 

Ratification of the Constitution, 176 

Reagan, John H., 347 

Reaper, 284 

Recall, 527-528 

Reciprocity, in McKinley Tariff Act, 
447, 455; defeated, 520 

Reclamation Act, 523 

Reconstruction, 412-415; Reconstruc- 
tion Act, 414 

Reed, Thomas B., 445 

Referendum, 527 

Reforms, political, 285-286; . social, 286; 
educational, 286-287; religious, 287- 
288; on slavery, 2P3-291 

Religion, in Massachusetts, 55-56; among 
the colonies in general, 11 2-1 13 

Religious persecution, Plymouth, 42; 
Massachusetts, 50-51: New England, 
56; Maryland, 57-58; Pennsylvania, 

75 
Representation, different views, 1 20-1 21 
Reprisal on France, 201-202 



578 



INDEX 



Republican party, origin, 326-327 
Revere, Paul, 128 
Revolutionary War, 117-164 
Revolution in England, Puritan, 67-68; 

1660, 69; 1688, 79-81 
Rhode Island, founded, 50; government, 

51 

Robertson, James, 134 

Rockefeller, John D., 339, 395, 513 

Rodney, Sir George, 159 

Roosevelt, Theodore, succession to presi- 
dency and re-election, 478-479; re- 
nominated, 480 

Root, Elihu, 496 

Rosecrans, William S., 368 

Routes to West, 240 

Russian America, 65 

Samoan Islands, 458 

San Francisco, early growth, 310; Cali- 
fornia, earthquake, 505; exposition, 
505; igio, 509 

San Juan, battle, 474 

Santiago, battle, 474 

Santo Domingo, and Monroe Doctrine, 

495 
Saratoga, surrender, 147 
Savannah, Georgia, founded, 81; taken, 

157 

Schouten van Horn, 17 

Schuyler, Philip, 146-147 

Scott, Winfield, Mexican War, 306; Presi- 
dential candidate, 325 

Screw propellers, 282 

Seattle, igio, 509 

Secession, spirit of, in the West, 170; 
threat, 344; arguments for and against, 
344-346; carried out, 346 

Second Continental Congress, 135-136 

Sectionalism, 250 

Sedition Act, 202 

Senators, election of, 526 

Separatists, beliefs, 43; set out for 
America, 44; arrival in America, 45; 
settlement in Plymouth, 45; leaders, 
46; democracy, 46 

Sera pis, 155 

Seven Years' War, struggle for the inte- 
rior, 90-91; preliminary phases, 91-93; 
belligerents compared, 93; military 
ev'ents, 93-95; treaty of peace, 96 



Sevier, John, settler, 134; Governor, 171; 
in Congress, 220 

Seward, William H., Compromise 18^0, 
321; campaign 18^6, 330; Dred Scott 
Decision, 332; campaign i860, 344; 
cabinet, 351; French expelled from 
Mexico, 422; attempted assassination, 
380; Liberal Republican, 418 

Sewing machine, 282 

Seymour, Horatio, Civil War, 365; nom- 
inated, 416 

Shafter, William R., 474 

Shays's Rebellion, 170 

Shenandoah Valley, earlv settlement, 90; 
Civil War, 378 

Sheridan, Philip H., Shenandoah Val- 
ley, 378 

Sherman, John, cabinet, 428; seeks 
nomination, 431 

Sherman, Roger, Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, 139; constitutional con- 
vention, 174 

Sherman, William T., Chattanooga, 376; 
in Georgia, 378-379 

Sherman Anti-Trust Law, contents, 445- 
446; enforced by Roosevelt, 514-515; 
by Taft, 515-516; by Wilson, 516-518 

Sherman Silver Purchase Act, contents, 
446; repealed, 460 

Shiloh, battle, 358 

Shipbuilding, in colonial period, 106; 
1793-1815, 203, 232 

Silver coinage, 428-429, 466 

Slavery, African, beginning in America, 
31-32; in early Virginia, 40; in 
South Carolina, 74; historical sketch, 
252-254; debate over Missouri, 254; 
arguments for and against, 341-342; 
opinion of Lincoln, 344; prohibited in 
territories, 364; abolished, 381; of 
Indians, 31 

Slave trade, in the Constitution, 254; 
described, 342; treaty with Great 
Britain, 374 

Slidell, John, in Mexico, 304; Trent 
affairs, 373 

Smith, Caleb, cabinet, 351 

Smith, John, 39 

Smyth, Alexander, 224 

Socialist Labor party, 466 

Social Democratic party, 477 



INDEX 



579 



Socialism, in Jackson's time, 286; growth, 
437-438 

Soto, Hernando de, 16 

South America, independence recognized, 
248-249; mediation, 424 

South Carohna, early, 72-74; opponent 
of protective tariff, 260-261; seces- 
sion, 346; reconstruction experiences, 
416-417 

Southern States, progress since 1865, 
507-508 

Spanish Armada, 36 

Spanish America, Peru and Mexico, 30; 
population 31; Indian slavery, 31; 
African slavery, 31-32; exclusiveness, 
32; rivalry with England, ;^;^ 

Spanish- American War, 471-474 

Specie Circular, 292 

Speculation, in Jackson's time, 279 

Spoils system, 269 

Spokane, 1910, 509 

Spottsylvania, battle, 376 

Squatter sovereignty, presidential cam- 
paign 1S48, 318; in Kansas, 325-326, 
328 

St. Eustatius, conquered, 160 

St. John, John P., nominated, 434 

St. Leger, Barry, 145 

St. Louis, iSio, 238; 1910, 509 

St. Paul, 1910, 509 

Stamp Act Congress, 119 

Stamp Tax, 1 18-120 

Standard Oil Company, 514-516 

Standish, Miles, 46 

Stanton, Edwin M., cabinet, 351; re- 
moved, 415 

Star of the West, 347 

Stark, John, 130 

State governments, new, 136-137 

Steamboats, first, 236-237; over the 
Atlantic, 282 

Stephens, Alexander H., 346 

Stephenson, George, 264 

Steuben, Baron von, 148 

Stevens, Thaddeus, on the South, 413 

Stock Exchange, 399 

Stony Point, 151 

Strike, anthracite coal miners, 518; 
Chicago, 437; Colorado coal miners, 
519; Cripple Creek miners, 519; 
Homestead, 453; Lawrence, Massachu- 



setts, 519; Paterson, New Jersey, 519; 

Pullman works, 462; railroad, 426 
Submarines, 501 
Sub-treasury system, 293, 315 
Suffrage, 115, 136, 189, 285; woman, 

529; 
Sugar Act of 1764, 118 
Sullivan, John, 152 
Sumner, Charles, on Kansas, 329; radical 

leader, 365; on the South, 413; Liberal 

Republican, 418 
Sumter, Thomas, 157 
Supreme Court, organized, 175; early 

influence, 188-189; attack on, 208; 

nationalizing decisions, 257-259; 

changes, 276; opposition of Jackson, 

276; after Dred Scott Decision, 332; 

unpopular i80, 463 
Supreme Court of the World, 487-488 
Surplus in Treasury, Jackson's time, 278, 

292; Cleveland's time, 440 

Tacoma, 1910, 509 

Taft, William H., Governor of Philip- 
pines, 482; cabinet officer, 479; nom- 
inated and elected, IQ08, 470; nom- 
inated, ic}i2, 480; view of Monroe 
Doctrine, 494 

Tariff Laws, Molasses Act of lyjj, 107; 
Sugar Act of 1764, 118; Townshend 
Acts of 1767, 122-123; ^7^9. 184; of 
18 16, 232; of x\bominations, 258-259; 
and nullification, 271-272; Compro- 
mise of i8jj, 273; 1842, 297; Walker, 
1846, 315; Morrill, 1861, 372; in Civil 
War, 388; 1865-1884, 439; not low- 
ered by Democrats, 440; Cleveland's 
message, 441; McKinley Law, 446; 
Wilson Act, 461; Dingley Law, i8g7, 
468; Payne- Aldrich Law, iQog, 520; 
Underwood Law, 191 3, 521 

Taxation of colonies, debated, 1 20-1 21; 
Act, 148-149 

Taxation, under the Confederation, 167 

Taylor, Zachary, Mexican War, 304-305; 
President, 318; death, 322 

Tecumseh, Indian chief, 226 

Telegraph, 282 

Tennessee, beginnings, 134; statehood, 193 

Tenure of Office Act, enacted. 415; 
repealed, 443 > 



58o 



INDEX 



Territorial additions, 309 

Territorial dependencies, constitution- 
ality, 484 

Territorial expansion, after Mexican War, 
298-309; after Civil War, 422-423 

Texas, immigration to, 277; indepen- 
dence, 277-278; annexation argu- 
ments pro and con, 298-299; campaign 
75^^,302-303; annexed, 303 

Third term, Jefferson, 218; Grant, 
430-431; Roosevelt, 480 

Thomas, George H., Chickamauga, 368; 
against Hood, 379 

Ticonderoga and Crown Point, in Seven 
Years' War, 94; Revolution, 129, 147 

Tilden, Samuel J., nominated, 419; 
defeated, 420-421 

Tobacco, early culture in America, 40 

Toledo, 1910, 509 

Toleration, religious, 57 

ToscaneUi, 2; map, 3 

Town meeting, in New England, 
114-115 

Townshend Acts, 122-123 

Trade Commission Act, 517 

Trade, foreign, twentieth century, 
511-512; routes to the East, 4 

Travel on frontier, 240-242 

Treaties, peace, under Wilson, 486-4S7 

Treaty, Paris, 176;}, 96; France, 148, 
202; Paris, 1783, 161-162; Spain, 199; 
Barbary States, 199; Ghent, 1814, 229; 
Guadalupe Hildalgo, 306-307; Clay- 
ton-Bulwer, 311-312; Washington, 
423; Paris, 75p5, 474; Hay-Pauncefote, 
1901, 489; Portsmouth, 487 

Trent affair, 373 

Trenton, battle, 144; welcome to Wash- 
ington, 179 

Trusts, growth, 513-514; regulation, 
514-518 

Tweed, William M., 401 

Tyler, John, President, 297; quarrel 
with Whigs, 297; on Texas, 299; peace 
conference, i860, 348 

"Uncle Tom's Cabin," 323-324 

Union, of colonies, 127; of states, 166 

Union Labor party, 442 

United Labor party, 442 

United States Christian Commission, 386 



United States Sanitary Commission, 

385-386 
United States Steel Corporation, 513, 576 

Vaca, Cabega de, 15 

VaUandigham, Clement L., 365 

Valley Forge, camp, 150 

Van Buren, Martin, President, 291; 

defeated, 294-295 
Vancouver, 20 

Van Rennselaer, Stephen, 224 
Venezuela, boundary dispute, 469; and 

foreign powers, iQ02-igoj, 494 
Verrazano, Giovanni da, explorations, 

14; welcome by Indians, 22 
Vespucius, Americus, voyages, 11; Amer- 
ica named in his honor, 1 1 
Vice President of the United States, 

powers, 175 
Vicksburg, taken, 368 
Vincennes, captured, 153 
Virgin Islands, purchased, 502 
Virginia, early, 37-41; royalist reaction, 

70; education, 70-71 
Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, 

203-204 
Virginia Plan, 174 
Virginiiis, 424 

WaldseemiiUer, Martin, names America, 
11-12; his map, 12 

Walker, William, filibustering, 336 

War of 1S12, 223-230 

War with Germany, 502 

Warren, Joseph, 130 

Washington, George, in the West, 91; 
Braddock's defeat, 92; First Conti- 
nental Congress, 127; Commander-in- 
chief, 130; Long Island, 143; Trenton, 
Princeton and Morristown Heights, 
144-145; Philadelphia campaign, 
145; Valley Forge, 150; besieges New 
York, 151; Yorktown, 159; end of 
war, 162; Shays's Rebellion, 170; con- 
stitutional convention, 173; first Presi- 
dent, 179; inaugural address, 180; 
precedents set by, 180; constitutional 
construction, 187-188; aristocrat, 
189; second election, 191; military 
power, 192-193; foreign affairs, 193- 
200; Farewell Address, 200 



INDEX 



S8i 



Washington, District of Columbia, capi- 
tal, i86; captured, 226 
Watch Trust Case, 516 
Watauga River, 134 
Water works, 280 
Wayne, Anthony, 151 
Weaver, James B., nominated, 431 and 

453 

Webster, Daniel, in Congress, ^247; 
Hayne debate, 270-271; opposes Jack- 
son, 276; Presidential candidate, 291; 
Ashburton treaty, 298; compromise, 
1850, 320-321; death, 324-325; fili- 
bustering expeditions, 335 

Welles, Gideon, 35 

West, in 181 5, 237-244; laws to open up, 
336; growth fostered, 403; migration 
across plains, 404 

West Indies, settlement, 58-59; pros- 
perit}^, 107; Wal, 132; trade closed, 
195; trade opened, 278 

West Virginia, loyal, 356 

Western Reserve, 168 

Western Union Telegraph Company, 395 

Weymouth, George, 37 

Whig party, 291 



Whiskey rebellion, 192 

"Wildcat banks," 279-280 

Wilderness, battle, 376 

WilUam and Mary, King and Queen of 

England, 79 
Williams, Roger, 50-51 
WiUiamsburg, taken, 361 
Wilmot Proviso, 317 
Winslow, Edward, 46 
Wilson, James, 174 
Wilson, Woodrow, nominated and elected, 

480-481; reelected, 502; War Message, 

appendix IV 
Witchraft, 56 
World's Fair, Chicago, 461 
World's richest nation, United States, 

512 
Wright brothers, 511 
Wyoming Valley, 152 

"X, Y, Z" affair, 201 

Yale College, in 

Yorktown, surrenders, 159; in Civil War, 
361 



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